


The Wonderful Mess We Made

by useyourtelescope (thedreamygirl)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (kind of in that order?), Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Comedy, Drama, F/M, Minor Violence, Romance, Secret Identities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-26 16:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2658221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedreamygirl/pseuds/useyourtelescope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as career changes went, it had been somewhat unexpected. And sure, Clarke supposed, the whole venture was rather idealistic, more than a little dangerous and, as Raven had pointed out, slightly crazy.</p><p>But, what else did you do when you suddenly developed superpowers?</p><p> </p><p> <i>Or, the one where Clarke and Jasper are scientists who turn superhuman, Raven and Monty are their human friends who are no less super at fighting crime, and Bellamy absolutely does not believe in superheroes…until he meets one. - That's when things get really interesting.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic exists because I started watching The 100 the same time I got into Arrow - I just didn't expect the little idea I had to become a multi-chapter, especially considering I haven't written properly in years (turns out these characters gave me a lot of feelings!). Although inspired by some of the set-up of Arrow/how the team works, this isn't an Arrow AU specifically, it's influenced by a lot of superhero stories. 
> 
> Title is from Flaws by Bastille. Thanks to L for being the first reader of this story!

The location: Monty Green & Jasper Jordan’s apartment (just outside the nice part of Ark).

The time: way too late for anyone who still held a 9-5 job to be awake (or so Raven Reyes kept reminding everyone).

The current subject of conversation: a little hard to explain…

 

“So, what about ‘Night Watch’?”

Raven snorted. “Sounds like an ‘80s TV show.”

“No, but what about ‘ _The_ Night Watch’,” Jasper persevered, from where he was perched on his kitchen island. “Sounds cool, right?” When Raven looked unmoved, he turned to his former (and, in a different way, current) colleague Clarke Griffin, who was sitting up next to him, hands tucked neatly underneath her legs. “Right?”

She cocked her head to one side, long blonde tendrils falling in front of her face. “I don’t really get it.”

Jasper threw his arms up in exasperation. “What’s there to get? We _watch_ the _night_!”

Raven folded her arms and leaned back against the counter opposite them. “Sounds lame. And boring.”

“I mean, we watch _over_ the night – you know what I mean,” he added, his trainer-clad feet tapping quickly on the cupboard door beneath him. Raven might have mistaken the gesture as impatience, but Clarke had known Jasper long enough to notice just how much his once occasional restless energy had been amplified by the accident. “Look, if you don’t like it, fine. What are your suggestions for a team name?”

“I was under the impression we didn’t want people to know there are actually four of us doing…whatever we’re calling this. Anyway, my point is maybe we shouldn’t have a team name,” Raven pointed out.

“But superhero duo names can be a little cheesy – and would be kind of unfair, to you and Monty.”

“And also unnecessary,” Clarke chimed in. “I don’t see why it really matters what people are calling us. Plus, the public seem pretty happy discussing it so why do we need to come up with a name ourselves?”

“Easy for you to say,” Jasper complained, raking his hair up with one hand, giving himself something of the look of a mad scientist (which, incidentally, had been his profession before the accident. Well, the scientist part anyway. Though Monty would have said mad wasn’t too far off.) “You’ve been given really cool names, like Princess or – oh, what was that one on the news this morning?”

“The Angel of Ark?” Raven supplied.

“Yeah!”

Clarke shook her head. “It was ‘Ark Angel’ and it’s not really that cool. It makes me sound too saviour-y.”

“Hey, it’s a hell of a lot better than Mr. Speed, which is the best they’ve come up for me.”

Clarke gave him a deliberately polite smile and tried to shrug like it wasn’t that bad, but Raven couldn’t hold back her laugh. “It does make you sound like a drug dealer.”

“What about Lightning Man?” The trio all turned their heads to the doorway where Monty had appeared. “No?” He added, when they just stared at him. “What, it’s not like I came up with it. I read it online yesterday, I thought it was okay.”

“I thought you were not to be disturbed,” Raven noted, considering that they had all been kicked out of Monty’s bedroom twenty minutes prior for, apparently, disrupting his process.

“Also, Lightning Man is awful. Truly terrible,” Jasper said.

Monty shrugged, walking round the other side of the kitchen island to get to the fridge. “Didn’t sound like you guys were coming up with anything better. And yes, I could still hear you talking from my room because you are that loud.”

“So are you here to tell us off or were you able to access the file?” Clarke interrupted quickly, before Jasper could continue the debate.

He took a quick swig of his drink before he gave them the news. “I’ve not got the file, but that’s because I can’t.”

“Didn’t you claim you could hack into anything?” Raven pointed out.

“I can if it’s there,” Monty defended quickly, “But I can’t hack into something that isn’t actually on their network. Turns out the court only started digitising their records late last year and they’re still way behind. I can tell you exactly which room it’s in, but for a place this behind on the digital age with their paperwork, their security system looks pretty tight.”

“Too tight for even Mr. Speed to whiz in and out of?” At Jasper’s glare, Raven only smiled.

“I’m afraid so. It’d actually be easier to get in there during the day when none of the alarms are on, but even if I manage to turn off all the CCTV you’d have to get past a lot of people before you can get to the records room.”

“Well, you can create false paperwork, right?”

“Raven, I feel a little insulted that you even have to ask.”

“I suppose we could disguise one of you,” Raven suggested to Jasper and Clarke, “Pretend to be a lawyer or something, and go get the case file.”

“It can’t be me, not after what happened on Friday,” Jasper said.

Clarke raised her right hand, intending to rest it on his shoulder, but he had already hopped off the counter and started out the door. Thanks to his new abilities that meant he had done a lap round all the other rooms of the apartment and returned to stand next to Raven, causing her ponytail to billow slightly in the breeze before Clarke’s hand had even reached the level where his shoulder had been.

“You’ll get it sorted,” Monty said reassuringly, and Raven nodded in agreement.

“It’ll probably get a lot easier when you can start training properly; we just need to figure out better places for us to use.”

“I’m working on that,” Clarke informed them. “And I could be the one to get the file, but it’d have to be a pretty good disguise to make sure I wouldn’t be recognised.”

“Didn’t realise you had a lot of friends at the court?” Monty wondered.

“These high society types, they have a lot of powerful friends,” Raven said with a smile, causing Clarke to roll her eyes.

“I might happen to run in the same circles as some of the people who will probably be there. Especially since the District Attorney announced he was going to be running for Mayor; all Mom’s events have been swarming with lawyers. Though Raven, since you’re basically always my date to those things, you can’t exactly say I’m the only one –“

Clarke didn’t get the chance to finish, when Jasper suddenly exclaimed, “Wait, that’s it! Let’s just get an actual lawyer to go in and get the file for us!” Jasper sped round the kitchen island, opened the fridge for a drink, discovered Monty had taken the last one, and grabbed it out of his hand. Jasper gulped the rest of it down, not forgetting to add the item to their shopping list pinned on the cork board above the sink, all in less than the time it took the others to realise what he’d just suggested. Not giving them a chance to respond, he went on to explain why he thought it was a brilliant idea, including the fact that they wouldn’t need any fake paperwork and, Jasper’s favourite part, “No one would suspect a thing.”

“Oh, sure Jasper, we’ll just ask a _lawyer_ to go break the law for us.” Raven laughed.

“Not that I’m inclined to agree with someone who just used their superpowers to steal their friend’s drink, but I kind of like the idea. It does mean bringing someone else in to the fold, but it would also make things a lot easier for us,” Monty agreed. “And not just for this; having a lawyer on our side could come in handy later.”

“Wait, you’re serious?” Raven wondered, and looked to Clarke for support, but even she seemed to be considering it. “You all actually think it’d be easier? I thought the first rule we all agreed on was ‘tell no one’?”

“But we don’t need to tell them who _we_ are,” Jasper insisted. “That’s the beauty of it. We’ve started to build a reputation now; we’d just go to them in costume – well, I say we, but at this point in time it’d really be Clarke. Anyway, they’d feel like they were helping Ark’s new superheroes.”

“There are a lot of people who think Shumway should be behind bars, but that a fair trial won’t get him there,” Monty pointed out, Jasper nodding the whole time.

“And why are people who work on the side of the _law_ ,” Raven stressed, “going to trust us?”

“Hey, all they really know about us so far is that we’ve prevented a few crimes – so our methods were a little unorthodox-”

“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

“But,” Jasper continued, “we just brought people to justice and left them for the police to deal with - so technically all we did was assist the law. I think there’ll be some people out there who would be willing to help us keep doing that even if it does mean bending the rules…a little bit.”

Raven breathed out sharply through her nose, and turned to look at Clarke who had remained uncharacteristically silent in this discussion. “Clarke, what do you think?”

“Think any of those lawyers you mentioned would be willing to help the Ark A…” Jasper interrupted, trailing off when he couldn’t complete his latest effort. “No, I got nothing.”

“I’ve been tracking what people have been saying about us online,” Monty pointed out. “I could see if any of our fans would be useful. But, if you do know someone who might help it would make it a lot easier.”

Clarke pursed her lips in a thin smile, but it wasn’t a happy one. “Unfortunately for me, I actually do.”

Jasper and Monty shared a confused look, but Raven, suddenly comprehending Clarke’s meaning, had the gall to cackle. Clarke only sighed. The things she was willing to put herself through for her city.

 

* * *

 

The first time he’d heard about it, Bellamy Blake had just laughed it off. After all, the whole news report about the attempted bank robbery sounded like a total joke. Criminals who just get found unconscious but otherwise unharmed at the scene of the crime along with all the money they were trying to steal? That was pretty unusual round these parts, but what really made it weird was all the civilians who claimed to have been saved by two individuals with actual _superpowers_ , yet no one had a better description than, “One was a blonde chick”. The only witness who had anything different to say claimed an _alien_ had lifted him out of harms way when a gun was pointed in his direction. Sure, Bellamy was a cynic, but the whole thing was just too ridiculous to actually be real.

So, maybe he found it a little strange a few days later when his friend and Ark Police Detective Nathan Miller was surprisingly cagey when asked about the incident and flat-out ignored any his remarks about the supposed _superhuman_ aspect of it all. Then again, there were plenty of other things that could explain that.

But, there probably weren’t a lot of other things to explain the existence of a similar report soon after, this time about an attempt on the life of a family, one Bellamy had actually met. The father was a witness to a mob-related murder, a case one of Bellamy’s colleagues was working on. Bellamy had met the family when they’d been in the office; the little girl was a cute two year-old and both parents had seemed nice, if concerned about their situation (with good reason, considering the hit).

At any rate, they were definitely people who Bellamy thought were of sound mind, and they had gone on television claiming the armed man had disappeared into “a huge gust of wind” that had suddenly whipped through their house. When they’d gone into their daughter’s room they found her sat up in bed, unharmed although her window had been broken open. The only explanation she’d been able to provide was that a strange man had started to enter through it, but he’d soon been dragged back out by a woman. The description the girl had given of her saviour was that she “wore a mask” and “had hair like Princess Rapunzel.” When pressed for further details she’d only acknowledged that the lady’s hair was maybe not quite as long as Rapunzel’s.

After that, the idea that Ark now had two mysterious heroes (and the Princess nickname) had taken off with a lot of people, Bellamy’s sister Octavia included. The pictures some neighbours had taken of the unconscious and tied up assailants secured outside the family’s house before police had arrived to the scene were proof that something strange was going on, but he didn’t believe anyone got saved from an assassin by _wind_.

Still, a week later a security guard at a tech company was on TV claiming he had been knocked out by masked intruders, but awoke to find the same intruders now unmasked and tied up neatly beside him. He’d apparently also caught a brief glimpse of masked man and woman stood talking outside the glass doors of the building, before the man had grabbed her elbow and they’d both disappeared into a sudden burst of wind.

Bellamy started to find it all rather curious. He didn’t exactly buy the more _heightened_ elements of the stories of course, but it was certainly a nice change to hear about all these prevented crimes, considering how bad things had been in Ark for a while, and (not that he was about to admit it to Octavia, who kept babbling on about them) he was actually looking forward to their next sighting.

He just didn't think that the next sighting would be by him.

One night Bellamy was the last one in the office when the power had suddenly gone off. Thanks to his case load and the electricity company’s inability to properly maintain any of the cables outside of certain zip codes, neither of those things was that unusual. Unfortunately, this time he’d been at the vending machine when it happened which meant neither his phone nor flashlight were nearby.

His initial irritation however quickly turned into apprehension when he heard someone call out, “Bellamy Blake?”

It was a female voice, one that was soft but still managed to hold authority. Most importantly, at that moment in time, it seemed unfamiliar.

He turned around slowly, and saw from the light that had filtered in from the streetlights outside, a figure stood in front of the far wall. She was next to a window that definitely had not been open when he first got up from his desk to get a late-night snack.

It was too dark to see her face properly, especially as she had a mask that covered her eyes as well as a hood pulled down over her head. Her dark clothes merged into the blackness around them, but the gentle breeze from the open window caused her long (definitely blonde) braid that trailed out the front of the hood to flutter in the wind.

So much for hoping one of his colleagues had returned to the office.

Asking who she was felt like a stupid question. After everything that he’d heard on the news over the last few weeks there was only one answer to that. He did, however, feel compelled to ask, “How do you know who I am?” Bellamy had a slightly chequered past but he’d cleaned himself up at sixteen and he didn't think the shit he did over a decade ago could really be considered important. Still, despite not being able to see her eyes clearly in the dim light something about her gaze made him feel like he was in trouble.

“I saw you on the news –“

“Probably not as much as I’ve been seeing you on the news.” He had felt the need to assert himself, but as soon as he said it he wondered if it was a mistake to have interrupted. She might not actually have superpowers but she seemed like she could do some damage with the silver baton in her hand.

She just cleared her throat and continued like nothing happened, though oddly it sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “I’m here about the Shumway case.”

“What about it?”

“I have an interest in it. I thought you might too.”

He did. As far as Bellamy was concerned, Shumway was a bastard who deserved to rot in jail, but there were a lot of other powerful people in Ark who did too. And though Bellamy was on the news frequently enough whenever he had a high-profile case, he hadn’t been involved in this one. “Why would you think that?”

“You were part of the team that tried to send him to jail the first time around. An assignment, I understand, you requested.”

That was also true. He’d only just been starting out in his career then so he’d mostly done the grunt work, but he’d been happy to – his family had been one of the many affected by Shumway’s housing scam. Still, the case they’d put together had been nothing that a few well-placed bribes hadn’t been able to see off. Not that they had been able to prove that. None of the (admittedly few) losses he sustained as lead counsel now ever held quite the sting of that case.

“I thought,” she continued, “you might be interested in making sure that this time he stays behind bars.”

Well, she definitely had his attention. As she laid out what she wanted from him, it didn’t actually sound that difficult, and he wouldn’t be involved in hurting anyone – except for Shumway (if only he could be so lucky). But that still didn’t change the fact that part of what she was asking him to do was illegal.

“Thoughts?” she prompted, when he remained silent.

“Look, I want him in jail, I do, but I also don’t want to lose my job and possibly end up in jail myself.”

“No one will know you had anything to do with it. We’ll make sure you’re not followed.”

It was the first time she had said “we” and Bellamy realised he had forgotten about her co-conspirator. “Won’t you guys just draw extra attention to the whole thing? His whole…wind…thing…is pretty noticeable.”

“Did you notice him leave something on your desk just now?”

Bellamy whipped his head around in the direction of his desk, just as the lights suddenly turned back on enabling him to see a file on top of his keyboard that had not been there when he left.

He looked back over his shoulder towards the window, but now it was closed and the woman gone.

Bellamy rushed over to the window and opened it again, but couldn’t see much of anything, let alone anything unusual. She couldn’t have just jumped down from 5 storeys up unharmed, but he couldn’t see where else she could have gone that quickly either. Unsure of what else to do, he returned to his desk and opened the new file. He read over their precise instructions for what they needed him to do the next day before the paper disintegrated, leaving behind an empty folder. The plan was oddly reassuring, though he found it annoying that she had just assumed he would do it without sticking around long enough for him to actually agree.

(Not annoying enough for him not to go through with it, though.)

That was how, less than a month after he first heard of the supposed existence of superheroes in Ark, Bellamy found himself standing on the rooftop of his office building with a stolen confidential file waiting for a nameless, masked stranger to turn up. He didn’t consider himself to be that impatient but he thought it was a little rude of a vigilante to ask for your help and then keep you waiting.

He’d felt out of his comfort zone stealing a copy of the information that morning, but her delay to collect it made it even worse, to the point that the previously familiar sound of sirens nearby made him even more jumpy. As a result, he was too busy mentally reprimanding himself to hear her arrival behind him.

“You got the file?”

He swung round hastily, from surprise mixed with a little bit of anger. “Yeah. You got a watch?”

The moon, combined with the lights from the buildings around them, made it brighter than it had been during their previous meeting and she was standing slightly closer, but the hood and mask were still enough to obscure the top half of her face. He could see her lips curve into a tight smile, though. “Sorry to keep you waiting Mr. Blake,” she said, not sounding sorry in the slightest, “I’m afraid your time wasn’t my top priority tonight.”

“You’re the one who came to me for help.”

“And the city of Ark will be eternally grateful for it, I assure you.” Her tone combined with the slight incline of her head as if she might bow came off as awfully sarcastic.

“Listen, this guy needs to be sent to jail and it looks like he’s been too good at buying people off for me or anyone else to put him there without you getting involved. But nobody knows who you are so it doesn’t matter for you if people find out what we’ve done. I, however, don’t live behind a mask,” he ranted, dropping the file unceremoniously on the rooftop floor, “so just try not to screw this up for me.” He turned on his heel without bothering to look at her, and stormed towards the escape door, ready to slam it behind him.

He had nearly reached it when he heard, “Bellamy!” It wasn’t the call that stopped him, but rather the tone of her voice – it sounded different somehow, more familiar and lacking the regal authority of before. But once he faced her again and she spoke, now holding the file in the hand that wasn’t carrying her shiny baton, whatever he thought he had heard was gone. “There was a robbery going on a few blocks from here, that’s why I’m late. And I do know what you risked today. I won’t forget that.”

It wasn’t quite an “I’m sorry,” but he figured he’d take it. If she really had stopped to prevent a robbery he wasn’t enough of an asshole to hold a grudge over that. “Okay. Does that mean you owe me a favour now?” (He was still asshole enough to expect something in return.)

She smirked, almost as if she had expected the question. “I guess that it does.”

He nodded, pleased. “Alright, so, is there like a bat signal or something so I can call you? Or have you not worked that out yet?”

Her quick grin revealed a flash of teeth. “If the time comes…I’ll contact you.”

Bellamy was about to ask how, when he felt like something – or maybe someone – rush past behind him, but, after turning around on instinct, discovered whatever it was had disappeared.

A quick glance back over his shoulder confirmed that she had too. For some reason he couldn’t quite explain, this time it made him smile.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments on the last chapter! :) Hope you enjoy this update (and I'm feeling optimistic the next one won't take quite as long, I've got lots planned...)

“Just come out with it already –“

“I told you, it’s a surprise,” Clarke insisted.

“Surprise suggests it’s not totally obvious,” Raven muttered, kicking at a stone with her boot as she and Clarke continued along the sidewalk. “And if your surprise is what I think it is, I already have some reservations.”

“Just be patient, we’re nearly there,” Clarke responded as they turned the corner.

“ _This_ is it?” Raven exclaimed moments later when Clarke stopped in front of their destination; an old warehouse that appeared at least a decade past its best days. “Is it even safe to go inside there?”

“Of course. And we will do, as soon as Monty and Jasper arrive,” Clarke said mysteriously, rooting around in her bag for the key.

Raven folded her arms and huffed, her dark hair swaying with the slight shake of her head. She didn’t have to wait for long, however. “Here come our partners in crime now,” Raven noted, having spotted Monty’s van pulling up on the other side of the road.

“Don’t you mean partners in fighting crime?” Clarke added as she unlocked the entrance, lowering her voice despite the lack of other people about.

“Probably depends who you ask.”

“Sorry we’re late,” Jasper apologised, after the pair had jogged over the empty road. Clarke was about to explain that they had only just arrived themselves, thanks to Raven’s insistence on parking farther away, but Jasper wasn’t finished. “ _Someone_ wouldn’t leave the house until they found their hair gel,” he said pointedly, running a hand through his own scruffy locks in frustration.

“It wasn’t that I _couldn’t_ leave the house without it,” Monty defended (though Clarke couldn’t help but note he did look perfectly coiffed, and absent-mindedly smoothed down her own messy waves). “I was just wondering what had happened to it. We don’t all have superpowers to speed us up when we’re running late – which _you_ could have used to help me look by the way.”

“I want to use my superpowers for things that actually matter – not to look for people’s hair products that were in the bathroom the whole time!” Jasper argued, raising his arms.

Monty looked as if he was about to reply, so Clarke quickly jumped in, loudly clearing her throat. “Guys, why don’t we just move on?”

“Yes!” Raven agreed, nodding at Clarke. “Please do. Immediately.”

Clarke waited a moment for Jasper and Monty to both silently agree before turning to face her, along with Raven. “So, as you all know, after the accident wrecked mine and Jasper’s old lab, my Mom said I could pick our new permanent location.” Clarke had been working at Griffin Industries HQ in the months since the accident, as had most of the other scientists who’d been based in their old building. She hadn’t minded it while she was carrying on their research alone, but sharing the facilities with so many more people was starting to get on her nerves, not to mention it made it harder to perform the tests she’d started doing after she and Jasper realised their special abilities. Now that Jasper was about to start back at work – their official, paying, work – they really needed their own space. “Anyway, I did a lot of looking around –”

“Wait,” Raven said, “this dump is going to be your new _lab_?”

“It’s not a dump. It’s just a little unloved from being abandoned for so long, but I’ve had it renovated.”

“And you told them to make the outside look worse?” Monty asked.

Clarke pouted. “I told them to leave the outside mostly as it was so as not to draw more attention to it. It’s not exactly lab central around here.”

“Which brings us to the question, why did you pick it for our lab?”

“Because it’s going to be more than just our new lab, Jasper.” Clarke pushed the door open behind her and gestured for them all to file in. She followed them into the doorway and turned on the lights.

Raven looked over at her friend. “Well, I guessed you wanted to show us our new base,” she started, and Jasper and Monty both nodded in agreement, “but all I’m seeing is lab equipment.”

“That’s because,” Clarke began, walking further into the room until she reached a desk and moved her hand underneath it to reach a hidden panel, “you haven’t seen all of it yet.”

The other three stopped their movements abruptly as Clarke’s action caused part of what had previously appeared to be a solid wall to move, revealing a staircase behind it.

Jasper gaped at it, then at Clarke. “Is that what I think it is?”

Clarke smiled back at her friends’ excited faces. Collectively they all ran towards and then down the stairs, without waiting for a reply. Raven was at the front, with Clarke trailing behind the others at a leisurely pace, until they reached the newly renovated basement.

“I did start off looking for two separate locations, but I figured combining the two would give us a good excuse for being here if we need one. I brought our costumes in and the weapons, and your equipment, Raven, but I haven’t quite figured out how to lay it all out yet. I thought we could all input…” Clarke trailed off as Raven and Jasper had already begun bouncing about the large room, making suggestions as to where things could go. She took a step closer to Monty who had hung back by the bottom of the stairs. “Sorry none of your things are in here yet, Monty; I just thought you’d know best what we needed.”

“Hey, no need to apologise. I still can’t get over the fact that we have a secret door.” Clarke chuckled as he continued, “I can’t wait to bring everything over from the apartment.”

“You know instead of just installing your own stuff, we could buy some new computer equipment. Make any upgrades that’ll be useful.”

Clarke had thought his eyes had lit up when he’d seen the staircase, but her words seemed to make them grow even wider.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I put some money aside especially,” she told him. Clarke was lead financier of their operations since she was the only one with that kind of money, and it wasn’t like she’d been doing anything with her trust fund before anyway. Paying for the building work had been a little tricky to juggle; the work on the lab was paid for by Griffin Industries by their regular workers, but she’d had to sneak in the other modifications using her own money and various other contractors (call it paranoia, but using just one person to remodel a secret hideout felt like asking for trouble). Still, she felt like it was worth it and she took her friends’ animated faces as agreement.

Monty grinned at her, his brain clearly already whirling with plans for his gadgets. “Clarke, you…you are like Santa.”

“Does this mean I get cookies?”

“Can they be shop-bought? Because, and I’m sorry, but I will not learn to bake for you.”

 

After a short discussion, it was agreed that they would all meet at the warehouse after Raven and Clarke came back from dinner.

As Clarke re-organised her bag, Raven headed to the bottom of the stairs. “Just give me a couple of minutes to bring the car around.”

“Where did you guys park?” Monty wondered. “There was loads of room out front.”

“No way am I leaving my baby out on this street; I have put way too much in to her.” Then, she added to Clarke, “Cool secret room and all, but you couldn’t have chosen a better neighbourhood?”

“This is the same distance between your place and Monty and Jasper’s so it’ll make it easier for us all to get here in emergencies.”

“It’s probably also the same distance between every known drug dealer in Ark,” Raven noted.

“All the better to stop all those drug-related crimes,” Clarke responded with a smile. Monty smiled back before venturing to another part of the room, effectively trading places with Jasper who jogged back towards Clarke.

Raven shook her head just before she walked up out of their view. “Could have at least built a garage if you expect me to keep getting here at a moment’s notice.”

“You guys are seeing your mom before she leaves, right?” Jasper asked.

Clarke nodded. “Yeah, you guys feel free to start setting this place up as you like while we’re gone. Oh and here are both your keys,” she placed them into Jasper’s palm before opening up the panel in the wall with switches for the secret passageway and explaining how they worked.

Jasper nodded along to Clarke’s instructions and tried to reassure her, “Don’t worry about this place. Monty and I will keep watch over our lair.”

“Lair?” Monty repeated, turning his head back over to them.

“What, you don’t think it has a lair-like feel?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t a lair sound like something only the bad guys have?” Monty mused.

“Let’s convene in the secret room doesn’t really have the same ring to it.”

“You’ll get there eventually Boy Wonder.”

Jasper pouted. “You know I don’t like that one either!”

Knowing it was a source of annoyance, Clarke tried to reassure him. “I’m sure you’ll find one you like soon.”

“I guess,” he said, but looked away, sticking his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he clearly tried not to fidget. “It’s just you get all these good ones, and they can’t even come up with a decent companion or sidekick name for me? You know, I don’t expect them to start calling me The Prince or anything - ”

“You’d be more like Court Jester anyway,” Monty called out from the other side of the room.

“Jasper,” Clarke interrupted gently, before he could retort back, “you’re not my sidekick, you’re my partner.”

He gave her a little smile, but looked somewhat forlorn as his gaze turned back to his shoes. “You just make it look so easy you know? Controlling your power.”

“I was lucky – being able to magically heal your own injuries is a lot easier to hide than super speed. And besides, you’ve got the heightened strength and sight and everything else too, same as I did.”

“Well, lucky for me, heightened sight just meant I could ditch my contacts. And as for heightened strength I can maybe carry a few extra boxes at once, great help that is. It’s not like all the stuff you can do.”

Clarke shook her head, her sympathy tinged with a little bit of impatience, having had similar discussions with Jasper before. “You know, that’s only because I’d been taking those self defence lessons for years. Even with Raven’s help, I was totally average until the accident amped up my reflexes and everything. You’ll feel differently once you’ve done more training – and that is going to be a lot easier now that we have our own space.”

Jasper nodded, and actually looked a bit more upbeat this time. “I guess that’s true. It’ll be nice to practice controlling my speed without worrying someone will see me when something goes wrong.”

“Exactly,” Clarke said, relieved. “No one can get in here except us – and technically my mom and a few other staff to inspect our work upstairs, but they wouldn’t turn up without telling us and, well, that’s why we have a secret door, anyway.”

“It’s pretty cool actually, having a secret…base underneath our lab,” Jasper paused. “I’m going to come up with a good name for this place by the time you guys are back.”

“Guess I’ll be doing the heavy lifting then,” Monty surmised.

“You guys have fun,” Clarke told them as she made her way upstairs, laughing quietly as she heard them start to bicker.

“What about The Watchtower?”

“Dude, we’re underground!”

Clarke still didn’t get Jasper’s fixation on naming everything, but it made him happy and at least it distracted him from his other concerns. Clarke had meant what she said about his power being harder to control, but it had only been just over two months since he’d woken up from the coma and they’d discovered the accident had given him powers, too. She’d been relieved, to be honest. Not just that he’d woken up, but also, a little selfishly, that there was someone else who was in the same boat as her. There were still so many things they didn’t understand about their abilities and, even if their powers weren’t identical, it was a relief not being the only one going through it all.

* * *

Clarke tried to play the attentive daughter at the dinner with her mom, especially as they hadn’t spent any time together outside of work since the accident. Plus, Abby was now going to be away for a few months, but she had a lot to be distracted by. She was glad all the building work was done so they wouldn’t have to keep flitting between apartments (mainly Monty and Jasper’s since Monty usually needed more than just his tablet to work – which wouldn’t have been so bad if the boys ever cleaned more often than just when their moms visited) but there was still so much they needed to do to make their operation run smoothly. Was it really any wonder she had trouble staying focused on polite chitchat?

Still, when she visited the bathroom after their starter had been taken away, Clarke gave herself a quick talking to, telling herself she had until she returned to the table to make mental plans regarding her…extra curricular activities. After that, she was going to focus solely on the present conversation; or at least make a better effort, like Raven.

Clarke might have gotten a little carried away with making her mental lists, though. Lost in her thoughts, Clarke instinctively walked out of the bathroom and returned the way she came, without considering any of the diners or servers that might have been nearby. As a result she collided with another patron on her right, causing them to drop a bag of food onto the floor.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry – Bellamy!”

He nodded grimly at her, before bending down to retrieve the bag he’d just picked up from the takeaway counter. Some of the containers in the bag had spilled open, spreading their contents all over the floor, and a little bit onto his shoes.

“I am so sorry,” Clarke repeated, thoroughly embarrassed at having been distracted enough to have caused the problem, and even more so that it involved _him_ of all people. “Can – can I help?” Bellamy shook his head, even as she reached down to assist him in picking up the mess.

“That’s not necessary,” he refused through gritted teeth, though he soon altered his expression and tone to one more cordial and contrite when restaurant staff rushed up to them, one brandishing a mop.

Clarke apologised again, this time towards the staff, who quickly insisted they would replace the food free of charge, gesturing the two of them away from the mess and back towards the takeaway counter. She followed the path of their hands, as did Bellamy, though when he stopped Clarke realised she was in the opposite direction of where she needed to be.

Bellamy looked up from wiping the last of the food off his trainers and seemed to notice she felt a little out of place. “You don’t need to wait with me, Dr. Griffin. I’m sure I won’t have another mishap.”

Clarke bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from responding rudely. Technically it was her title, but Dr. Griffin had always been her mom and Clarke still felt strange when anyone called her that outside of work. More importantly, the way Bellamy had said it made it sound like an insult (though if she really thought about it, apart from that first half hour when they met years ago before he had realised who she was, he tended to make everything sound like an insult when he spoke to her). And was he suggesting that he wouldn’t have a mishap as long as she wasn’t there? All of these were infuriating enough to consider. Best not to think about the issue of having recently co-opted him into her secret crime fighting force as well.

Deciding it was high time she returned to her table, Clarke glanced at the side of his face as he stared over the counter towards the kitchen and said evenly, “Well, sorry for interrupting your night,” before she turned on her heel.  
  
Bellamy shrugged and replied, not noticing Clarke had started to leave. “It’s Octavia who you should really be apologising to. You know how she gets when she’s kept waiting.”

“Oh, is Octavia here?” Clarke looked around, but Bellamy shook his head.

“No, she’s waiting for me at her apartment.”

“Oh, I remember her saying her new place was nearby. Guess she’s moved in then.”

Bellamy nodded but said nothing, simply tapped his fingers lightly against the counter a little impatiently, and just like that any residual sympathy Clarke might have been feeling because of her own carelessness vanished. She might have been the one walk into him, and he may be the older brother of her friend and former fellow student (and he may have risked his career to assist her in taking down a corrupt businessman), but that was no excuse for his persistent rudeness.

“Right, well if you can remember, could you please tell Octavia I said hello.”

He smirked. “Oh, I’ll certainly remember; I’ll be blaming my lateness entirely on you.”

Clarke shot him back a thin smile. “Always a pleasure to see you, Bellamy.”

“You too, Doc.”

She did not storm away from him because that would have been completely immature. (That didn’t mean she didn’t think about it.)

Raven looked at her suspiciously as she returned to her seat, but Clarke relaxed her features to show that nothing was wrong.

“Are you feeling alright, honey?,” Abby wondered.

“I’m fine, Mom. This looks great,” Clarke said, and started to fill her plate with the food that had been set out in her absence.

“Well now that you’re back, I can tell you my news.”

Clarke and Raven both glanced quickly at each other but, recognising neither had any idea to what she was referring, soon returned their attention to Abby.

“As you know, I’m going to be away for a few months, checking in on all our subsidiaries. But, when I come back I’m going to be changing my role at the company.”

Clarke stared wide-eyed at her mother, leaving it to Raven to ask, “You mean you’re not going to be CEO anymore?”

“The current plan is that I will still retain my title of CEO, but I won’t be quite as hands-on in the management side of things.”  
  
“But, why not?”

“Clarke, you know I never wanted to be a business woman. Back when we started we were clear, I was in charge of all the research and your Dad handled everything else. But when he passed, Thelonius convinced me that I needed to step up and look after the business side of things.”

“And he was right. You had so much to deal with then but the company’s been flourishing ever since. Dad would be proud of you,” Clarke said honestly, just before her stomach grumbled a little loudly, a reminder that her mom’s revelation had surprised her out of starting on her main meal. Raven smirked at her from over her glass as Clarke set about rectifying the situation, but Abby only smiled politely.

“And you, Clarke. But I decided it’s finally time for me to do something for myself again. It just took _superheroes_ showing up in Ark for me to realise that,” she added.

Clarke nearly choked on her chicken, but was able to hide her reaction better than Raven who still had some water in her mouth and unfortunately ended up spitting it back in the glass.

Abby looked over, concerned. “Raven, is everything okay?”

“Uh huh,” she said, then coughed and hit on her chest for good measure. “Just went down the wrong way. Fine now. So, uh,” Raven said, locking eyes with Clarke who still had her lips firmly shut as she attempted to process her food without incident, “what was that you were saying, Abby? Something about superheroes?”

“Well, I’m sure you girls couldn’t have missed the stories about them,” Abby said with a laugh, not noticing their half-hearted smiles. “Hearing everyone talk about their super human abilities reminded me of why I wanted to be a scientist in the first place. The human body is capable of so much, why not a man who can travel so fast that all the average eye can see is wind? Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m going back into the lab again,” she stated firmly. “Not full time obviously, and only a little to begin with – it’ll be a phased process – but it’s one we’re going to start as soon as I’m back. I think the business side of things can handle it.”

“Oh,” Clarke started, relieved, “so you mean hearing those stories just inspired you to go back to doing what you really loved.”

Abby shook her head. “Oh no, I have been thinking about it a few times in the last year or so. But, I still felt like there were other things in the business that needed my attention, and we weren’t working on anything at the time that really grabbed me.”

“So what are we working on now that you’re going to be involved in?” Clarke asked, racking her brains over what she’d heard in the main office.

“I’m going to take over the genetic mutations study.”

“What exactly does that entail?” Raven asked carefully.

Clarke took another mouthful of food and chewed slowly to avoid speaking; already aware of the response that would follow next.

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss the details; but it’ll certainly be more exciting than the account books I’ve been looking over all week. And speaking of exciting things, I don’t think I’ve had time to speak to either you properly since there have been all these superhero sightings. What do you two make of it all?”

“Well, I mean nobody knows what’s really going on there. Could all just be rumours,” Clarke rambled, not making eye contact with anyone. “Didn’t one of the eyewitnesses say they thought they were aliens?”

“Aliens? Clarke, are you sure you’re feeling alright? You do look a little pale actually, even for you, and you were in the toilet a while.”

“Haha, no I’m fine, mom. I mean, I don’t think it’s actually aliens, just that if someone thought that, then maybe we should take a minute before we believe everything that people are saying, you know?” Clarke finished and gulped down most of her wine. (They would definitely need another bottle if she was going to make it to dessert.)

 

“Seriously though, Clarke, aliens?” Raven practically yelled once Clarke had shut the door to the new lab behind her, continuing their discussion that had been paused when they got out of the car.

“I panicked!”

“You’re a scientist! I think letting your mom think you might believe in _aliens_ before genetic mutations would be more alarming to her.”

“I know, I know!” Clarke exhaled sharply, then, “Look, it’s fine -”

“Yeah, for now! When Abby gets back – “

“We’ll have figured something out by then,” Clarke said, trying to instil more confidence into the statement than she felt. “We’ll just have to learn everything we can about our abilities before she gets back.”

Raven sighed. “Guess it’s a good thing you’ve got your own private lab then,” she pointed out, as Clarke opened the secret passageway. “You do realise you can never under any circumstances injure yourself in front of Abby though.”

“Well, now I feel like a piano is going to drop on my head the next time I see her,” she grumbled as they started walking down the staircase.

Raven followed, saying, “So, we’ve got some great news, guys,” as soon as she saw Monty and Jasper below.

“We’ve got some pretty great news too,” Monty quipped, swivelling around in his chair in front of the few monitors he and Jasper had installed.

“Before we get into that though,” Jasper interrupted, rushing over, “Firstly, Raven you never replied to my text. With the top three name suggestions?”

Raven shrugged. “Whatever, I don’t really care.”

Jasper beamed. “Excellent.”

“Though they all sounded pretty lame.”

“Told you.”

Jasper shoved Monty’s chair before continuing. “Fine. Secondly, what do you guys think of the layout we’ve got going on right now?”

“It looks good,” Clarke offered after a cursory glance, perching herself on the table opposite Monty.

“Good is fine, but don’t you think it might look _great_ if the computers were over in that corner and –“

“Give it up man,” Monty interrupted, “you lost fair and square. You should have known better than to go with paper.”

“I just can’t believe you went for scissors. You were always a rock man! I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”

“Guys!” Raven exclaimed, in a tone that left no room for argument. “Our news is actually pretty important.” When she had their attention she looked to Clarke to fill them in.

“When my mom comes back from her business trip she’s going to be joining the genetic mutations study at Griffin Industries…and it sounds like she’s specifically interested in how someone might develop _our_ abilities.”

“Oh. Our ‘great news’ was also sarcastic, but it at least had a ha-ha element to it,” Jasper said.

“Why, what’s your news?” Clarke wondered.

Jasper leaned back against the wall, still processing the new information, so Monty took the reins. “Well, like we’d talked about, I was looking into ways we might be able to question Murphy about his supplier without having to break into prison –“

“I still maintain that’s a viable option,” Jasper interrupted.

“Anyway turns out his parents have decided the fourth arrest is just one too many and have cut him off. And no money means his fancy lawyer quit this afternoon.”

“And why is that funny?” Raven asked.

“Guess who his new state-appointed lawyer is? Two guesses – no, only one, but I’ll give you a clue: it rhymes with cake, or –“

“I cannot catch a break!” Then, in more of a low growl, but not quiet enough for the others to miss, “For fuck’s sake.”

Monty looked pleased first, then suddenly, concerned. “Hey, are we sure Clarke didn’t turn telepath too?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the people of Ark grow only more interested in their new heroes, Clarke and Bellamy slowly get to know each other a little better (as much as that is possible when one of you is a superhero with a secret identity).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone reading. I wrote the majority of this chapter a while ago, it just took me longer than expected to finish it up. Hope you enjoy, let me know what you thought, I love hearing from you!

Clarke had almost finished reading the article when she heard the sound of the main entrance opening above them. Monty and Jasper turned their faces away from the computer screen around which the three of them had been huddled, to look at Clarke in unison.

“Do you think she knows?” Monty wondered.

“I call dibs on not telling her,” Jasper stated.

“Can you call dibs not to do something?”

Jasper shrugged. “Yeah, you can dibs anything.”

“Well, you can’t dibs anything,” Monty argued, “If you could then I would be the one with superpowers running around pulling people out of burning buildings while you did all the behind the scenes work that you didn’t get enough credit for.”

“Seriously, guys!” Clarke interrupted, before Jasper could retort back. “It doesn’t matter if she does know yet or not,” she said, answering their original question. “Don’t worry about Raven, we all knew this could happen at some point.”

They soon heard Raven’s boots jogging down the staircase, and Clarke looked up to see her friend brandishing a newspaper in her hand. “Have you guys seen this yet?”

Clarke nodded while Monty raised an eyebrow at her. “We’ve all just been reading it. You know that’s available online now right? For free?”

Raven rolled her eyes as she dropped the paper onto the table in between them. “Guess I got overexcited when I saw the front page.”

“You don’t look excited,” Jasper noted.

Raven simply glared at him, waiting until Jasper looked suitably chastised before directing her attention to Clarke. “He mention this to you at all?”

Clarke shook her head and couldn’t help from reaching out to pick up the paper and unfolding it so she could see the article in question. It was still open on the screen behind her, but there was something different about seeing it on the page amongst the layout of the other articles. She figured it must have been a slow news day for Ark Daily to put a comment piece on the front page (even if it was the lower front).

“I thought Wells always said he wanted to cover hard news,” Raven commented, “not write a puff piece.”

Clarke ran her fingers over the ink where the byline read: Wells Jaha. Just above was the title of his article on Ark’s secret crime-fighting force. Her nail scratched a little on the sub-heading: Ark’s Allies or Adversaries?

“It’s a pretty good article though,” Clarke admitted with a sigh. “He always was thorough.”

“Some of it was a bit flowery for me,” Monty contributed, taking a bite out of a cookie he picked up from the plate next to him, before scrolling to a particular section of the article online, “but it was a catchy ending. And I gotta admit, he gave us a pretty neat name.”

Jasper nodded glumly. “Ark Avengers! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!”

Raven scoffed as she shucked off her jacket and dropped it onto the table. “Seriously, the name is what you’re worried about?”

“He’s your friend,” Monty shrugged, gesturing at Raven and Clarke. “Wait, is it was or is?”

“Is,” Clarke said immediately, then added, “Sort of. We kind of drifted apart after high school. We still meet up regularly ever since he moved back after college. Well, we did meet up regularly before…all this,” she gestured around them.

“I thought you said he wouldn’t be into this kind of story?” Jasper noted.

“Well, I knew he’d be interested, but it was never the kind of thing he’d write about,” Clarke replied.

“Guess things have changed,” Raven stated, shoving her hands in her back pockets. “Do you think we need to be worried about him doing any digging?”

Clarke twirled a finger in her hair, considering. “I’m not sure. It’s really more of an opinion piece than an investigation. He’s clearly done his research but all the actual facts are no different to what’s already been covered by everyone else.”

“And his opinion sounds pretty favourable,” Monty pointed out. “That’s a good thing right? I mean, so far everyone from the government or the police has pretty much said ‘no comment’ about us. The Mayor’s kid coming out in support of us, that has to be a win?”

Jasper looked persuaded by his friend’s reasoning but Clarke not so much. “Wells and his Dad are kind of distanced. And I don’t think Thelonious will be happy about this.”

“Have you seen Wells since he came to visit you in hospital?” Raven wondered. “We need to find out how far he’s going to be looking into this.”

“Yes, but it was over a month ago. I’ve been meaning to call him about meeting up again, I guess now I have another reason to,” Clarke said with a sigh, and helped herself to one of the cookies.

Raven nodded. “I’ll ask Finn about it too.”

“Who’s Finn? This Finn?” Monty wondered, eyes resting on the open hard copy newspaper, his finger pointing towards the main headline regarding the upcoming Mayoral election with a byline of Finn Collins.

“Yeah, he and Wells are always competing for the best stories at the Daily.”

“And you know him too?”

“He’s my ex,” Raven said simply, prompting Jasper to look subtly over at Clarke, but she ignored his gaze.

Their shared history with Finn was complicated, but it was well in the past, and she and Raven could both count him as a friend, even if Raven was the one who kept in better contact with him. It had happened well before Clarke even knew Jasper, but she had let some of the details slip one Friday night after a particularly bad week in both their work and personal lives when they’d had a few too many. Still, none of that mattered anymore and neither she nor Raven wanted to go over the story with Monty.

Luckily, Monty remained oblivious to the finer details of his friends’ glances, still absorbed in the paper, probably the first he’d studied in years. “So you guys have not one but two old friends-slash-boyfriends who are investigative journalists? Sounds like something a guy should know before getting into the secret crime fighting business.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Raven stated. “Finn already invited me to go to this reading at The Dropship next week, I can ask him them.”

“I’ll call Wells at lunch, see when he’s free,” Clarke said.

Monty nodded. “I’ll have a look into their search histories, see what I can find.”

“I’ll…” Jasper trailed off with a sour look on his face and picked up three cookies. “I’ll go practice running fast.”

Clarke was about to stop him but Jasper didn’t leave her chance to before scoffing down the cookies and speeding over to the newly installed treadmill on the other side of the room, setting it up to take the required measurements.

“So you guys get any work done yet?” Raven asked after she’d picked up the paper that Jasper’s flight had pushed to the floor.

“Well, these two haven’t done anything in the lab today, but I actually managed to sort out three of my IT clients in between crime fighting research,” Monty said, a little proudly.

“I was referring to the crime fighting work, actually.”

“Oh.”

“Monty had started running a search based on the arrests carried out last night before we got distracted by the article,” Clarke explained, still scanning the paper copy of said article. “Anything turn up?”

“Yes,” Monty said slowly, before looking over to Clarke and adding “but you’re not going to be happy about it.”

Clarke caught his eye and wrinkled her nose. “Not another dead end?”

“More like a familiar end…” Monty trailed off, clicking a button to maximise one of the windows so that they could see what he meant.

Raven couldn’t help her short laugh once she saw Clarke’s reaction, her eyes widening in comically slow motion. Jasper raced back over to them at the sound, just in time to see Clarke’s face scrunch up in annoyance.

“Aren’t there any other lawyers in this damn town!”

* * *

Clarke wasn’t sure what she expected to find when she let herself into Bellamy’s apartment, but a little ginger cat certainly hadn’t crossed her mind.

The cat stared suspiciously at Clarke as she gently eased herself in through the window that looked out onto the fire escape. She paused with one leg inside, and one still on the ledge as it considered her, before the cat seemed to decide it didn’t care, slinking back down the corridor.

Clarke quickly finished her descent, careful not to bump the baton strapped to her back on the window frame, and shut the window behind her. She had intended to leave it partially open, since that would help her make a quick exit and was also how she’d found it, but she didn’t want Bellamy to be able to accuse her of causing his cat to escape. Just another reason it was a bad idea she was here. She hadn’t wanted to go to his home, meeting at his office at least kept things professional, but Monty had discovered that Bellamy had left work early for a change and gone to the gym. Tracking him down at the gym or on his way home would have been less personal, but gave her more opportunities to get caught so she’d reluctantly agreed with her…associates that this was the best option.

She knew Bellamy wouldn’t arrive for at least another five minutes, so she began walking down the corridor, trying to decide where the ideal place to wait was. She wanted to avoid being too near the front door, just in case anyone else was on the front landing when he entered. The first room she walked past was clearly his bedroom, revealed by a half open door, but it felt a little too invasive to hide in there. (Clarke laughed inwardly at the thought – she hadn’t broken in, but she hadn’t exactly been invited.) However, she wasn’t left with a lot of other options.

The apartment was relatively small; aside from his average sized main bedroom, there was one slightly smaller second bedroom that was so packed full of boxes and random objects that without her heightened vision she might not have made out the single bed hiding under it all. Next to that was the bathroom at the other end of the corridor, which led to the combined living room and kitchen area. It wasn’t as big as her apartment, but seemed comfortable enough for one, though she knew from Octavia that it was where both siblings had moved to once their mother had died. It was nice, but Clarke was certain Bellamy would have been able to afford to move somewhere a lot nicer, and in a much better neighbourhood, some time ago (after all, Octavia had). She briefly wondered if it was nostalgia or pride that kept him from doing so.

Clarke finally decided on a position that was in an open area without being in the line of sight of the front door, and settled against the half-wall where the living room adjoined the kitchen. She slipped her left hand into her pocket to check on the device Raven and Monty had put together that would keep the apartment in relative darkness even if Bellamy tried to turn on the lights, and as her eyes scanned the walls for the switches she spotted two framed pictures on a side table that sat underneath the one closest to her. Clarke was intrigued by the sight, one of the few truly personal touches she had noticed in the whole apartment so far. The first picture was of teenage Octavia in her cap and gown, smiling widely at her high school graduation. The other was of a little girl and a boy playing in a park. Clarke found herself using her free hand to lift up the second picture for a closer look, and couldn’t help smiling at the simple happiness that came through on the young Blake children’s faces.

She quickly put the picture back in its place when she heard the sound of a key in the lock.

He had already kicked the door closed behind him and had one hand up towards the light switch when he saw her, and even in the darkness she could spot the moment surprise changed to a smirk. “Honey, I’m home.”

She rolled her eyes, and felt irritated for having not a minute ago thought he looked adorable, but mentally reminded herself that, in fairness, it had been directed at his prepubescent self helping his little sister construct something in a sandpit. That was adorable. The only A-word to describe adult Bellamy with was annoying. (Or aggravating. Or, asshole. Huh, so maybe there were a few.)

“Didn’t mean to keep you waiting…” he added, but it took her a minute to respond, distracted as she was by the fact that he brought his hand back down without bothering to try the light.

“It’s alright. Your cat kept me company.”

“Excuse me?”

“Uh, yeah. Over there,” Clarke pointed to where the feline was currently happily curled up against a pair sneakers that appeared to have been thrown behind the armchair.

Bellamy took a few steps forward and sighed heavily as he saw the animal, dropping his bag on the floor. “That is my neighbour’s cat. They must have left the window open again.”

“As did you.”

“I don’t have a cat to worry about getting out. Though,” he added, glancing back at her face, “clearly I need to worry about who might get in.” Clarke rolled her eyes again, but before she could reply Bellamy continued, “So, did you come to snoop around my apartment or do you need my help again?”

The way he stressed “again” grated Clarke more than just a little, but she couldn’t exactly deny it. “It won’t take up a lot of your time,” she attempted to say politely as he hung his jacket on the hook on back of the door.

“You’ll have to give me a minute first.”

“What?”

He gestured to the cat. “Those are my good trainers and you do not want to know what she did to the last pair of my shoes she got her paws on.”

Clarke couldn’t help the chuckle she let out at the remark. “Well, maybe if you didn’t leave them lying around, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.”

He smirked as he made his way over to the cat, commenting, “Well, I didn’t know to expect company.” His expression changed as he bent down to pick up the cat, however, stroking it gently as he did so, murmuring, “Come on Natalie, let’s get you back to your parents”.

Clarke found it a strange sight as he walked back through the living room, now cradling the cat against his torso. She’d always thought of Bellamy as grumpy and irritable (not to mention, irritating). Even though Octavia had told her some stories about him that painted him in a nicer, considerate older brother sort of way, on the occasions Clarke saw them together they seemed to argue more often than not. But he was almost smiling as he held this cat who was apparently more than content to curl up in his arms while he stroked her stomach.

It was not adorable at all.

“So, Natalie, huh?,” Clarke said quickly, as Bellamy approached the front door.

“Yeah, it’s a funny story, actually,” Bellamy began, before stopping his movements as abruptly as his words, as if he suddenly remembered something. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, his face slightly confused. “I’ll, uh, just be a minute.”

As he left, shutting the door behind him, Clarke tried not to take it personally that he had clearly decided against sharing the story with her. After all, this was not a personal call, this was business (of a kind), and when had she ever enjoyed sharing anecdotes with Bellamy Blake anyway. (Besides, the story probably wasn’t even that funny.)

In his absence Clarke mentally went over what she needed to ask him regarding their latest lead now that the information they’d gotten from Murphy had been a bust. After a couple of minutes had ticked by she started to get a little concerned about how long he was gone and wondered if she was being too soft in just letting him leave like that. However, even as the slight worry entered her mind, she couldn’t really believe Bellamy was about to sell her out. Leaving aside everything she knew of him, there was always the fact that she could easily take him down with her. There were plenty of Shumway’s cronies who were still free and dying to know the details behind their boss’ arrest. Of course, Clarke would never reveal Bellamy had helped them, but he couldn’t be sure of that.

She was still reasoning with herself when he returned, entering the room with an ease that suggested he didn’t have a masked vigilante impatiently waiting for him. Bellamy leant a hand against the door once it was closed, and she noticed that he didn’t move to turn the light on again.

“You know, I was thinking,” he began and Clarke nearly bit her lip to stop herself from making a quick remark, “the first time I helped you, you promised me a favour.”

Clarke pursed her lips in a thin smile. “I did. Do you need something?”

“No, actually. That’s my point.” He pushed himself off the door and stood up straighter, hands shoved into his trouser pockets. “This is the third time you’ve needed my help, but I still haven’t needed yours to close any of my cases.” If Clarke thought his tone was grating, it was nothing compared to the arrogant smirk that graced his lips.

“And you just wanted to remind me of this?”

“I actually wanted to ask for something else.”

“So you don’t want a favour anymore?” she wondered, unsurprised when he answered with a shake of his head.

“Oh no, you still owe me. But since it doesn’t seem like I’ll have to call that in anytime soon, I’d like something else.”

Clarke braced herself. “And what would that be exactly?”

“I’d like to ask you a question…about yourself.”

Well, that was unexpected. “Excuse me?”

His eyebrows lowered as if she were stupid. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

Clarke shook her head. “I’m here because you’re the quickest way to get the information I need, but we have other means, other sources. I’m not desperate enough to tell you all my secrets.”

“Not all, just one,” Bellamy shrugged. “It won’t even be a big secret. I just want to know how long you’ve lived in Ark.”

“I’m not just going to tell you my age – “

“No,” he interrupted, “I mean, are you from here? From Ark?”

Clarke eyed him suspiciously in the dim light. It was a simple enough question, though she was a little worried that there was more to it than it seemed. Still, if that was all he was going to ask tonight, it seemed harmless to reply truthfully. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Bellamy shrugged again. “I figured you probably were, but I wanted to make sure.”

She raised her eyebrows at him in an instinctive reaction, forgetting that the effect of the faint light streaming in down the corridor, plus the hood and eye mask meant he probably couldn’t tell. “And that’s all you wanted to know?”

“Well, no,” he said with a laugh. “But I figure that’s all you’re going to tell me at this point. We can get to the big secrets later.”

“Not likely.”

There was that smirk again. “We’ll see. So, Princess,” he said and plopped down into the armchair that faced her. “What can I do for you tonight?”

* * *

Bellamy swirled the last of his coffee in the mug as he did his best to listen closely to his sister who was currently catching him up on what she’d been doing since they last met up. He was interested, but he was also a bit distracted, as it was weighing on his mind a little that when it became his turn to give a recap he would have to leave parts of it out.

“…but I still haven’t heard back from all my applications so I’m hoping I’ll get a better one. Oh, hey, look.”

Bellamy followed her gesture to the television above the counter opposite them. The volume was too low for them to hear from their table in the diner but the visuals on the news report were clear enough. Bellamy wasn’t familiar with the face of the man in handcuffs but he did recognise the name as the headline blared the arrest, his capture reportedly down to the usual suspects.

“Ark Avengers strike again,” Octavia said with a smile.

Bellamy rolled his eyes at the reference to the newest name for them and the article that spawned it. It certainly encapsulated the image most people had of them, though Bellamy had been surprised to read the people’s new heroes being championed by none other than Wells Jaha. He’d never actually met him, but Bellamy didn’t see how the son of one of the richest men in Ark – former businessman, current outgoing Mayor Thelonious Jaha – could really understand what regular people in Ark really clung to about the supposed superheroes. He sure knew how to write about it though.

“What you don’t like the name?” Octavia wondered. “I think it’s catchy.”

Bellamy shook his head. “I don’t care about the name.”

“Doesn’t look that way,” Octavia pointed out. “Though if the name isn’t bugging you, maybe it’s just them. You know Bell, I think you’re the only person I know who seems actively disinterested in this superhero business.”

Bellamy ran a hand through his already messy black curls as he tried to formulate a response. He didn’t like keeping things from his sister but telling her the truth about his involvement with the so-called Ark Avengers was not an option. Aside from the fact that the Princess had been pretty clear about keeping quiet, Bellamy wasn’t entirely sure that he trusted her, or her partner, and he didn’t want to put Octavia in any danger. Still, acting completely uninterested was, perhaps understandably, making O suspicious anyway so he had to give her something.

“I just…I think they should leave things to the cops and the actual justice system, you know?”

“Well…” Octavia started, clearly preparing herself in case of an argument, “I know this is your area of expertise and not mine, but I kind of think of them as assisting the cops. I mean, yes it’s unorthodox, but they’ve helped put away some pretty bad guys.” She paused and met his eyes and they both knew without saying anything she was talking about Shumway. “They haven’t got in the way of any of your cases have they?”

“No,” Bellamy answered truthfully, after a beat. They’d given him a bit of a headache at times, sure, but they hadn’t gotten in the way of anything. Since Shumway they’d only wanted information, a lot of which he’d needed for himself anyway. That might not always be the case though, and he wondered what might happen when he ended up defending someone they were coming after. They tended to go for the big fish, not really the crowd he worked with, but the question was playing on his mind. “Whole thing just seems like it might be dangerous,” he said with a tone of finality. “Can we talk about something else now please?”

Octavia considered him for a moment, but seemed to accept his response. “Okay. You been up to much this week?”

Bellamy shrugged nonchalantly. “Not really. Just working a lot.”

“Oh yeah?” Octavia paused. “So are you pretty fully booked with your caseload at the moment, then?”

“I’m pretty busy, but it’s not too bad.” Not too busy to take house calls from the town vigilante-slash-superhero princess-slash-avenging angel or whatever you wanted to call her, he thought but tried not to let it show on his face. “Why do you ask?” he wondered at Octavia’s inquisitive tone.

“I was just…curious?”

“Because…” Bellamy prompted. He hadn’t wanted too many questions, but he could read his sister better than anyone (and being good at reading people helped him make a living) so he knew the expression she currently wore was not because she suspected him of anything.

“Because I might know someone that could use your legal expertise,” Octavia finished, her voice going up at the end, as if she were asking a question, leading Bellamy to immediately suspect the worst.

“Are you in trouble? What happened?”

Luckily, she interrupted him before his imagination could get out of control. “Oh no, not for me,” she said, waving her hand dismissively and taking a sip of her drink.

“Oh, okay.” Bellamy relaxed considerably and sat back in his chair. He didn’t mind helping out a friend of Octavia’s if he was able to. “Who is it?”

“This guy, he’s…kind of…my boyfriend.”

Bellamy blinked, taking a moment to absorb her words. “Your what now?”

Octavia rolled her eyes. “You heard me.”

“Did I though? Because if my hearing is right that means you spent all this time talking about your apartment and school and even bloody vigilantes before you thought to mention the fact that you not only have a boyfriend I don’t know about, but he’s also been arrested!”

“Hey, you love hearing about how awesome I’m doing at college!”

“Not enough to make me feel okay about you having a convict boyfriend.”

“Ex-con,” Octavia insisted. “He’s totally innocent this time.”

At the words this time, Bellamy groaned and shoved his plate to the side, his appetite evaporated.

As Bellamy listened to his little sister spend the rest of lunch explaining the particulars of her boyfriend’s situation he thought his day couldn’t get any worse. He changed his mind later that night when he was at his desk and the lights went out.

Bellamy sighed, not sure why he was surprised. At least he’d decided to be more prepared after her second appearance in the office and had moved one of the emergency torches to his bottom drawer. He went straight to open it and turned it on, placing it upright on his desk, before looking up and spotting his guest facing him, a few feet away.

“Twice in one week, Princess?” Bellamy asked. “Either you’re getting lazy or I’d say you just can’t get enough of my company.”

She scoffed, and in the torchlight he thought he caught a glimpse of a smirk under the hood. “Maybe if you’d been more helpful before I wouldn’t have to come back.” She sounded a little different once again; the changes always seemed slight but perceptible, clearly so that even if he heard a stranger with a similar voice he wouldn’t be able to tell if it was her or not. He wondered if it was intentional that she always sounded so high and mighty or if that tone was reserved just for him.

“I think I’ve been more than just helpful.”

“Well, unfortunately, so far your information hasn’t been. But we heard about another arrest that we believed is linked to our case, guy’s name is Lincoln – “

Bellamy groaned before she could finish her sentence. “You have got to be kidding me!”

Her heard turned sharply at that, tilting down towards him. Even though he could barely see her eyes he had the sensation she was staring daggers at him, and Bellamy briefly wondered if her superpower was laser eyes or something. “Excuse me?” she said, sounding somewhat clipped.

Bellamy felt the strange urge to apologise, but tamped it down considering she was the one who was bothering him at his place of work. “I haven’t even officially taken on his case yet, how do you know already?”

She paused, and when she spoke Bellamy wondered if it sounded a bit like surprise. “I didn’t. When we started looking into him, we realised you were too. Thought I’d find out why. He doesn’t fit quite the same profile as most of your clients.”

“Yeah, well, most of my clients aren’t dating my sister.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy sighed heavily, and moved some of the hair out of his eyes. “I’m planning on meeting him tomorrow – I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’d like to know the particulars of our conversation.”

“Yes, we’d appreciate it. Thank you,” she added after a beat, and to Bellamy’s astonishment it came across as genuinely grateful. Also surprising was that it took him a second to register she’d said ‘we’ and it struck Bellamy that if not for the news or their first encounter he’d insist she worked alone.

“Don’t suppose you’re going to give me any more information on what you’re actually looking into?”

“Same questions as last time will be fine.”

Bellamy wasn’t entirely satisfied, but accepted the statement with a nod. “So, Princess, that all for today?”

She nodded back and looked as if she was preparing to make her exit before she glanced at him side-on. “Unless there’s something you need?”

Bellamy shrugged. “Any chance you could pay my sister a visit and tell her to find a boyfriend that hasn’t seen the inside of a jail cell?” He wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking or not.

She laughed, a hearty chuckle that ruffled her long braid. “Not really part of the job description.”

A smile formed on Bellamy’s face in spite of himself. “I didn’t realise there was one for what you did.”

She held a hand up and gave a shrug of her shoulder, while a small smile played on her lips. “We’re putting one together. There might even be a handbook.”

Bellamy’s smile grew and his eyes flickered downwards, just in time for the lights to turn back on and render his torch unnecessary. He looked back up before reaching for the torch and found he was alone again in the office. As Bellamy returned to the case files he tried his best not to wonder why her exit, sudden as they always were, had this time felt disappointing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner plans, car chases and, uh, secretly investigating your friends' boyfriends. All in a day's work for our superheroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack, I can't believe how long it's been since my last update! I was quite busy for a bit but I've been writing a lot more again, and I've even managed to get slightly ahead with the upcoming chapters so there won't be such a long wait for the next few. Hope you enjoy the chapter, and let me know what you think! Feedback is always appreciated. :)

Clarke had never intended to take advantage of the fact that her boss was her mom, but she couldn’t deny there were times when those perks came in handy – and those times were much more often now that Clarke had another ‘job’ to keep her busy. Although she was technically still on the clock for another three hours, Clarke was already tidying up her lab equipment. She had been trying to work on her current research project for Griffin Industries – _really_ , she had – but it was a little hard to concentrate when she was preoccupied with everything else going on.

Once she had packed away the last of her samples ( _just temporarily_ , she reminded herself), Clarke took off her lab coat and moved to join her friends currently occupying their underground base. She heard Raven’s no-nonsense tone as soon as the door opened.

“You need to be less afraid to hit me.”

Monty’s chuckle filtered up the stairs before Jasper replied, “It’s not that, I just don’t want to seriously injure you. I do have superpowers remember!”

Raven rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re not acting like it. Besides, you can’t think like that when you’re out there,” she chastised. “You know you’re going to end up injuring people, right? The point of this is to do it properly, carefully, so you don’t injure the wrong people.”

“I know that, but it’s different when they’re the bad guys!”

“If you’re really worried Jasper, you can practice with me,” Clarke offered, making her presence known as she neared the bottom of the stairs. “At least, if I get injured it’ll heal straight away.”

Jasper seemed to be considering it, but Raven shook her head. “You need to get closer to Clarke’s skill level before we think about that. Look, why don’t you practice a bit more on the punching bag, I need to take a break.” Raven ended her statement by grabbing her water bottle and downing the rest of it before bringing it with her as she walked towards Clarke.

“I wasn’t trying to step on your toes,” Clarke said quietly once Raven was stood by her.

“Yeah, I know.” Raven shrugged before adjusting her ponytail. “And it probably will be a good idea for you guys to practice together later. He’s getting better – I think he could end up being better than you actually, if he could put more of his speed behind it. He’s just not there yet. ”

Clarke nodded as they glanced back to where Jasper stood at the back of the room, practicing his punches. Thanks to the treadmill and some gadgets they’d set up since settling into the base he’d been able to control his speed more cleanly at times but it was still inconsistent. The last thing they wanted was for Jasper to pass out in the middle of a fight. “Well, we’ll get there.”

Raven nodded and walked away wordlessly to refill her empty water bottle.

“So, please tell me your evening has been more productive than mine?” Clarke asked Monty as she sat down in the empty chair next to him in front of the monitors.

Monty smiled as he continued to move his fingers over the keyboard. “Not enjoying the lab?”

“Just having trouble concentrating when we’ve got…all this going on,” Clarke finished with a wave of her hand towards the multiple windows he had open on the screens.  


The information that Bellamy had gleaned from Murphy confirmed some of their suspicions about the drug trade in the area, but he seemed to be too far down the chain to provide them with any real leads. They’d gotten a few more useful details out of Lincoln who had been a guard back in his gang days, rather than just a corner street seller, like Murphy, and had known quite a few people. _Known_ being the operative word. A few years ago there had been an incident involving a few rival gangs that had ended up going up in flames – literally. Lincoln had managed to get out of the building in time but most of the people he’d called friends hadn’t, and in the aftermath he’d taken the chance to create a fresh start for himself. Now working at a health clinic as well as the boxing gym in Walden, he seemed like he’d been successful in turning his life around. However, Bellamy hadn’t sounded convinced and since he was the one that had actually met Lincoln, Clarke decided to do some digging for herself. (Or, rather, she’d asked Monty to.)

“Well, no big breaks on the case I’m afraid,” Monty admitted. “I did finish looking into Lincoln though, and the guy seems pretty impressive. I mean, healing the sick by day and volunteering to help at-risk kids in the evenings?”

“Volunteering?”

Monty nodded. “That’s what he does at the gym; he runs a program to help young kids from a similar background as his, give them an outlet to help prevent them from turning to the kind of life he did.”

“Wow.”

“I know, right? And he looks like _that_ ,” Monty gestured to one of the articles he had up on screen about the program, that included a picture of Lincoln stood outside the gym, surrounded by a group of children involved. His hoodie did nothing to hide just how much his physique had benefited from his time at the gym, and while he wasn’t smiling in the photo there was a softness to his expression that Clarke found endearing. “I mean, he’s not my usual type,” Monty continued, “but I definitely would be tempted to _accidentally_ run into him, if he wasn’t already dating your friend.”

Clarke laughed. “Is that your standard move? Use your skills to find out where someone you’re interested in is and just happen to be passing by?”

Jasper interrupted, having rushed over to join their side of the room, before Monty could respond, “Nah, he’s always too shy to make a move.”

Monty blushes, then mutters under his breath, “Like you can talk.”

“Hey!” Jasper exclaimed, after he gulped down more water, “I might strike out a lot – okay, basically all the time,” he added, at Monty’s look, “but at least I try.”

“Can we stop bickering and get back to work please?” Raven called out as she returned.

Jasper nodded and sped back over to Raven and the training mat, while Clarke turned to Monty. She was tempted to continue their teasing but he looked embarrassed and she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. She settled for, “So, I take it Octavia doesn’t really have anything to worry about then.”

“No,” he responded, an easy smile spreading over his face, “doesn’t look like Lincoln’s still caught up in anything. I’m glad they released him.”

Clarke nodded in agreement. Lincoln had been brought in after his prints had been found at a seemingly abandoned building in Walden where a shipment of drugs was being stored, but there hadn’t been enough evidence to charge him. Still, Bellamy had been on edge until Lincoln was let go; something he had claimed was down to Lincoln “refusing to help himself”, although Clarke attributed some of his irritableness to worry on Octavia’s behalf. He’d shot her down when she’d mentioned this, grumbling that she should leave his office so he get on with his job, but she’d seen the relief on Bellamy’s face when he and Lincoln had walked out of the police station, with Octavia stood between them. – She may have been watching from a nearby rooftop. Not like a stalker or anything, she’d just been in the neighbourhood on other business and thought she’d stop by. _Don’t keep justifying this to yourself_ , a voice in her head said (one that sounded suspiciously like Raven).

“They’re going to keep looking until they track down who the shipment belonged to, and we better keep at it too,” Clarke stated, all business. “With everything else that’s going on, Bellamy said top brass are leaning pretty heavily on the cops to start charging people.”

“Well, hopefully we can find a real lead soon. In the meantime is there anyone else’s boyfriend you need me to look into? Yours, perhaps?”

“Bellamy’s not my boyfriend,” Clarke said quickly, then flinched a little.

Monty’s smile grew and his fringe flopped on his face as he jerked his head towards the screen. “You did ask me to investigate his sister’s boyfriend.”

“Because Octavia’s my friend,” Clarke insisted.  


“Because Bellamy sounded ‘concerned’,” Monty countered, using air quotes to throw her own words back at her.

Clarke scoffed, but couldn’t help remembering all the times Octavia had complained about her brother’s over protectiveness and was a little annoyed at herself for letting that cloud her own judgement of Lincoln. Before she could come up with a response her phone pinged with a text message.

“I wonder who that is,” Monty said, too sweetly and Clarke rolled her eyes at him.

Clarke would have replied with a quip of her own since it obviously wasn’t Bellamy when he didn’t even know her number – or secret identity – but then she saw the message came from Wells, and was surprised to read: _Hey, you free tonight?_

They were pretty inconsistent about arranging their meet ups because of their schedules so it wasn’t that odd for him to text her so soon after they’d last seen each other, but it was rare for either to organise something so last minute.

She replied cautiously: _Just planning on working. Everything okay?_

Clarke didn’t have to wait long for his answer: _I’m fine, was hoping we could meet, for dinner maybe? On me?_

A few seconds later he followed with: _It’s important._

Clarke sucked in a breath. She’d met with Wells since his ‘Ark Avengers’ article came out and she’d been certain he hadn’t suspected her. She’d tried to avoid drawing too much attention to the subject but Clarke couldn’t help but be a little pleased to hear him talk of what they – she – did with admiration, even as he kept pointing out the problems of vigilantism, almost as if he was debating with himself. They’d all been extra careful since then regarding drawing unwanted attention to themselves, or leaving clues behind, but that was no guarantee. Wells had always been one of the smartest people she knew.

“Something wrong?” Monty asked, and she looked back up to notice him eying her expression with concern.

“I hope not.”

* * *

The thing about having raised your little sister, Bellamy had come to realise, is that she knows your tells just as well, if not better, than you know hers. He’d successfully kept secrets from Octavia in the past, sure, but none of them had ever made him feel quite so…uncomfortable.

It was to keep his sister safe, he reminded himself. According to most news stations, just last week the Ark Avengers (Octavia had been right about it being a catchy name) had caught more criminals and prevented more crimes than the entire Ark police squad. Bellamy wasn’t sure where they were getting those exact figures from, but the general point was there. Though the crimes appeared to be minor ones, in his experience many of them turn out to be linked to higher ranking, more dangerous criminals. He’d taken on the risk of aiding them, but there was no way he would risk his sister. Not to mention the fact that the superheroes themselves were a potential threat, if he ever got their bad side.

Of course, it was getting harder to remind himself of the potential dangers of _that_ when the Princess’ presence in his life was starting to feel more normal. Bellamy hated himself a little for it, but he had begun looking forward to her sudden visits – not just for the opportunity to help his city, but because he found he enjoyed her company. He wouldn’t go so far as to say she had loosened up around him, but he’d started to notice her crack a little smile at some of his jokes, before she recovered and went back to looking threatening. He had even thought she seemed almost sympathetic when he’d complained about struggling to get Lincoln to appear co-operative with the police.

_But that isn’t important right now_ , Bellamy reminded himself, returning his attention to his sister who was currently appraising him suspiciously from the other side of the table. He knew if Octavia ever found out what he’d been doing and he presented all his reasoning to her, she’d just insist he was treating her like a child instead of an adult the same way she had when she’d found out the details of their financial struggles after their mom died. When she stared at him with that determined glint in her eyes, Bellamy was certain she wasn’t going to let up easily.

“Seriously, nothing’s going on with you aside from work?” she said, in response to his earlier statement.

“Yeah,” Bellamy said cautiously, “Why?”

She paused, considering for a moment, as she tore a sugar packet open and added it to her coffee. “You just seem _off_ lately,” she answered finally, her tone only a few shades below vicious. “I thought at first it was because of the whole Lincoln thing – which I do not want to get into another discussion about,” she added, holding her hand up to stop him from saying anything, “But even since then, you just… you always seem distracted. And not like how you normally are when you’re busy.”

Bellamy ran a hand through his hair in frustration, thought he was mostly just annoyed at himself. Whatever his reasoning, Octavia was his only family and the person was closest to. He did _want_ to be honest with her, after all. “I don’t know what to tell you, O,” he said with a shrug. It didn’t really mean anything, but at least it wasn’t a lie.

“I ran into Nathan yesterday, he said you guys hadn’t seen each other in a while.”

“You know what it’s like when we’re both busy; sometimes Miller and I only see each other when when we’re working the same case. And that usually means I’m defending the guy he arrested, which is always awkward,” he added with a smirk.

Octavia gave him a pointed look. “I _know_ , but he seemed concerned. Sounded like you were the one who was too busy for him.”

Bellamy sighed and took another sip of his coffee. He hadn’t been trying to ignore Miller but he’d felt a bit awkward at the thought of seeing him given that the police were now under orders to arrest the vigilantes on sight, which they could have done if someone like him gave them a tip. Knowing Miller was getting leaned on at work for not being able to locate someone Bellamy got regular visits from did make him feel guilty, but despite that he’d decided he couldn’t give her up – didn’t want to, moreover. He’d figure out what to tell Miller later, but for now his sister needed a response, so he made a quick decision.

“Octavia, I can’t tell you –“

“Honestly, Bellamy, whatever is going on is clearly affecting you.”

“I was going to say, I can’t tell you _here_ ,” he finished, quietly but pointedly.

“Oh,” Octavia responded, clearly having expected him to continue putting up a fight. Which, to be fair to her, he usually did.

“We’ll talk about it in private. Another time, okay?” If he was being honest, Bellamy wasn’t completely sure what he would tell her then, but he needed the time to consider it further.

She studied him carefully, and when she spoke her voice was softer, less stern than before. “Is everything okay? Are you – “

“I’m fine, O. Seriously,” he added and gave her a big smile to try to erase the frown twisting her face. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I just – it’s just better if we talk about it at home okay?”

She nodded. “I can cancel on Lincoln tonight –“

“No, you don’t need to do that,” he said instantly. “It can wait. How about you come over for dinner later this week?”

“I don’t have plans tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow?” Bellamy asked. He would prefer more time to think about it, but it was better than nothing so he’d have to figure it out. He put on a playful front for Octavia, raising an eyebrow at her. “Wow, maybe I’d have worried you more if I’d known it would get you to spend time with me,” he said with a laugh, before jerking away from her slap to his arm.

“Jerk,” Octavia said, withdrawing her hand after she’d managed to hit his shoulder at least, but her expression was softer, jovial than it had been. “You’re buying me dessert for that.”

Bellamy laughed, this time the lightness in his voice genuine. “Whatever you want.”

* * *

Clarke held her breath as she waited for Wells’ news. They were sat in a diner they’d first discovered by accident their sophomore year of high school when they’d finally been successful in ditching Wells’ security detail and spent a few hours wandering the streets in Walden. They hadn’t been in the diner long when his bodyguard found them and carted them back home to Ark Central, but the memories of an enjoyable afternoon between friends had led to a repeat visit and it had soon become a favourite of theirs, despite the Mayor’s concerns.

It had always felt like a safe place, but now it gave her mixed emotions. She wouldn’t have thought Wells would choose to confront her in a public place if he truly suspected her, but she couldn’t explain the significance of him choosing this location for their meeting either.

“I’m sorry to do this on such short notice,” he said, after a few moments of them both blankly staring at their menus.

“It’s fine.”

“How’s work?” he asked, attempting a small smile; one that quickly dropped when he saw the look on her face.

“Wells, can you just –“ Clarke cut herself short when their server arrived with their drinks.

“Are you ready to order your food?” she asked after setting them down, a polite smile on her face.

Wells seemed about to request his usual, but Clarke couldn’t stomach the idea of eating without knowing what tonight was about so she cut in quickly, “Actually, could we have a few more minutes?”

“Sure,” the waitress nodded and left them.

Clarke looked over at Wells, trying to keep her face even. “Could you just tell me if…if everything’s okay?” she said finally.

Wells nodded, his face serious. “There’s going to be an article in tomorrow’s paper – about a potential scandal at GI.”

Clarke started, dropping her hands back onto the table in surprise at the mention of her parent’s company. “What?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it before it runs, but I wanted you to know in advance. I tried to get off the story but my boss wouldn’t listen. Look, try not to worry about it – “

Clarke couldn’t stop the bark of laughter she let out at that. “You’re telling me that there’s a scandal at the company my parents started; the company I currently work at – and you think I’m not going to worry about it?”

“I don’t think it’s true,” Wells said in a rush, voice still low but tense. “I just thought you deserved a heads up.”

“It’s not much of a heads up if you won’t tell me anything. And since when did you start writing stories you didn’t believe in?”

“We had more than one source; if I didn’t write it someone else would have.”

“So that makes it okay?”

“I said no at first but when I realised someone was going to write it whether I liked it or not I agreed so that I could control the story,” Wells said earnestly, “try to protect you, and Abby. You have to believe that, Clarke.”

Clarke felt a little pang of guilt at the hurt in his eyes, but not enough to let it go. “It’s a little hard when I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Wells shook his head, dark brows knitting together in frustration. “I really can’t say anything else. Especially not here,” he added, glancing around. The diner wasn’t busy, as they were later than the dinner rush, but it wasn’t empty either.

“You’re the one who picked this place to meet,” Clarke pointed out, “So, what, you chose it for an excuse then?”

“Clarke…” Wells began, pleading, but they were distracted by a sudden screeching sound, coming from outside the diner.

They both whipped their heads round to look out the glass window in time to see a long vehicle hurtling down the road, leaving behind a cloud of smoke and a number of shocked pedestrians.

Wells look unimpressed at the display, but instantly refocused his attention back to Clarke, clearly intent on continuing their conversation.

Clarke felt differently. “I have to go.”

“Clarke, come on, just stay for a little longer – “ Wells started, but Clarke was already placing some cash on the table to cover her drink. “I swear I’m going to find out the full story.”

Clarke paused at that. He clearly thought she was leaving over the article, but despite her mixed feelings that alone wouldn’t have been enough to cause her to storm out so soon. She knew he had always looked out for her, but it was better for her secret that Wells think she was leaving because she was upset with him than realise the real reason.

That reason being that in the blur of the truck driving away she’d managed to spot the writing on the side (her heightened sight wasn’t quite X-ray vision but it had its uses) which indicated it was one of the medical supply trucks – and Clarke couldn’t think of any good reason for it to be driven so recklessly, and in the direction leading _away_ from Walden General Hospital.

“Look, I’ll call you tomorrow. After the article comes out,” she added for good measure, as she quickly stood and grabbed her jacket.

Wells seemed to nod, albeit reluctantly, but Clarke didn’t have time to stick around.

As soon as she was out of the diner Clarke made sure Wells saw her walking past the glass window in the direction she’d normally take home, before ducking into an empty alleyway to activate her wireless earpiece and pressed the button to ring Monty.

He answered on the first ring. “Hey, Clarke! I thought you were with Wells?”

“We cut it short. Do you have a computer with you?”

In the background she could hear Jasper laugh. “Of course.”

“Can you access the security feed outside Walden General? I’m two blocks South of the hospital and a truck drove past, I think it might have been coming from there.”

“On it.”

In the distance sirens started blaring, approaching from the same direction as the hospital, which only strengthened Clarke’s suspicions. “Jasper can you get here?” she asked. “And bring my gear.”

“I’m just locking onto your location now, Clarke,” Monty told her.

“On my way!” Jasper yelled. Moments later he showed up, skidding to a stop by Clarke’s side, already suited up. “Here,” he said, grin visible through the gap in his mask, as his gloved hand held out a black bag for her.

“Thanks.” She grabbed her tools and hid her small handbag inside, but pushed aside the lower half of her costume, deciding there wasn’t enough time for the full outfit. She was wearing skinny black jeans so she figured they were close enough under the circumstances, and donned her usual hooded jacket, pulling the invisible zip all the way up to hide the collar of her casual blouse. Jasper dashed off to hide the bag, returning a second later while Clarke slipped on the eye mask and gloves before pulling her hair into a messy bun and putting the hood up.

“Maybe I should learn to braid so I could do your hair for you next time,” Jasper wondered.

“I think this is good enough.”

“Guys, I’m watching the security feed now,” Monty’s voice came over their earpieces. “Two armed men interrupted a delivery to the hospital.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“A few injuries, but doesn’t look like anything serious. Police are on their way but the nearest responder is 4 minutes out. The truck is still on the main road, looks like they’re heading for the highway.”

“We’re on it,” Jasper told him.

“Monty, can you try to divert traffic – “

“Already on it,” he said, over the earpiece.

Jasper grabbed onto Clarke and sped them in the direction of the vehicle and she had to stop herself from digging her nails into his shoulder as the slight wave of nausea overtook her on the short trip. She was growing more accustomed to the sensation, but it was still unpleasant. Jasper, and by extension Clarke, jerked to a stop on the main road a few metres ahead of the truck but before they could come up with a plan to stop it, the vehicle suddenly turned right into one of the quiet streets.

“Do you think they’re delivering the supplies to someone?” Jasper surmised.

“Maybe, but that’s a residential area. I don’t think the streets will be wide enough for it to get very far,” Clarke pointed out.

“That’s good for us, right?”

“Come on,” she said, taking Jasper’s arm again, as he raced them the short distance to where they’d seen the truck turn. They discovered it was slowing down already, though not due to narrowing roads, as Clarke had guessed, but because it was pulling to a stop.

“Do you think you could take us round to the front of the vehicle without them noticing?” Clarke whispered.

He gave their surroundings a quick look then nodded, making sure to grab her before he raced up the nearby fire escape and to the other side of an apartment block roof.

Quietly crouching down behind the ledge they watched in silence as the doors opened and two men got out of the vehicle. They were bulky, imposing figures though they only seemed to be carrying one gun each, as far as Clarke could tell.

Stepping out to the front of the truck; one signalled to the other and went round to the back. The other leaned back against the nearby building wall and…lit up a cigarette.

“Are they just taking a break?” Jasper asked, stunned. “I didn’t think the police were that far behind.”

“Monty,” Clarke called, pressing into her earpiece, “are you getting this?”

“You’re off the main roads so I don’t have a visual. The police aren’t far from your location though; they should be there any minute.”

“Maybe we should strike now,” Jasper suggested, “while they’re not expecting it?”

“They’re waiting for something, maybe someone. We need to know more,” Clarke insisted. “If we attack now, we’ll scare them off.”

“Careful, guys, the police are – “

“What? Monty?” Clarke prompted, surprised by the abrupt end to his statement.

“Dude, are you okay?”

“The tracker just went off.”

“You lost your connection?”

“No! It wasn’t me. I can still track the other cars just not the one that was closest to you – it’s just gone.”

“Shit,” Jasper hissed, turning to face Clarke although she kept her eyes focused on the driver who was still busy smoking. “Do you think their accomplices got to it?”

“Maybe,” Clarke mused, “would explain why he’s so casual. What do you think that one was doing back there?” she added as the second man came back out front to join his accomplice.

“I think I can hear a car coming,” Jasper noted and they ducked down further as they heard the sound of an engine below them.

The car rolled into view in the darkness, with no headlights or streetlamps to cast a shine on it, but even without their superpowers Jasper and Clarke would have been able to make out what car that was.

“Fu-“

“Shhhh!” Clarke interrupted Jasper’s exclamation, and pulled him down further.

“Guys? Guys! What are you seeing?” Monty asked impatiently.

“A police car just rolled up Monty,” Jasper whispered. “And they got in it.”

“Who? Wait, the guys who stole the truck?”

“They just jumped in the back, like it was their ride.”

“It was their ride,” Clarke stated grimly.

“But what about the delivery truck?” Jasper wondered, keeping his voice low even though the car had pulled away. “They’ve just abandoned it.”

“Monty, is the police car back on the system yet?”

“Not yet,” he answered. “No sign of them on the speed cameras either. Dispatch is still trying to get a read on them; you’ve got a few minutes before the next one arrives.”

“Jasper, see if you can track the police car,” Clarke instructed, “I’m going to see what he was doing in the back of the truck. If the supplies in there are still good we should return them to the hospital.”

Jasper nodded. “Signal me if you need me,” he said with a tap to his own earpiece before rushing away.

Clarke hopped from the roof to the top level of the fire escape, before getting down as quickly and quietly as she could. She checked her surroundings as she rushed to the back of the truck, making sure she was still alone. The numerous apartment blocks made it quite a crowded, built-up area, so it had been lucky no random passers-by had stumbled across them yet, but exuberant background noise had served the thieves well.

Not that thieves was necessarily the right term Clarke thought as she jumped into the back of the truck, the doors of which were still hanging ajar. Boxes had been torn open so it looked messy, but most of the cargo still appeared intact. Only a careful inspection would show what, if anything, had been taken.

Clarke reached for her baton and pressed the button Raven had fitted that turned one end into a flashlight to get a better look at the supplies. She bent her head to start examining the boxes, but when she heard the crunch of gravel on the road behind her only a minute later it shot back upright – just in time to see the shadows of three figures flickering in the light.

* * *

Bellamy was towelling his hair dry in his room when he heard the distant scraping sound, as if something was lightly tapping against glass. He dismissed it initially, but when it repeated more insistently he walked towards his open bedroom door with a groan. With a grunt he dropped his towel on the bed and went into the corridor, turning to face the back window.

He was surprised that he’d didn’t see Natalie perched there, as he’d assumed his neighbours’ cat was the source of the noise, but perhaps she’d jumped back to her own ledge, deeming him too slow to respond. Bellamy moved to open the window and look out just to make sure she wasn’t injured; but the sight that greeted him when he stuck his head out caused him to jump and knock his head on the frame.

“Wha - shit!” he said instinctively, but he wasn’t sure if it was a response to the mild pain or the completely unexpected person in front of him. – Well, maybe not _completely_ unexpected, as the blonde vigilante always turned up unannounced. However, this time she looked to be bleeding out on his fire escape…


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy Blake could deal with a crisis. It’s just that he could never have fathomed dealing with this particular crisis: that is, what to do when a vigilante turns up on your fire escape late at night with one hand pressed tightly to her abdomen trying to stop the bleeding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene in this chapter was one of the first I imagined when I was thought up this fic so it's nice to finally have it out there - only took me about a year! (Ack) Next chapter will be up very soon though, as it was originally going to be part of this one before I decided to split them. 
> 
> Slight warning in that I rated this fic T for some language & mild violence though there hasn't really been a big showing of either yet, but there is more language in this chapter (it is Bellamy POV after all) just FYI. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy it - please let me know! :)

Bellamy Blake had always been good in a crisis.

Okay, maybe not _always_ , but when your mom dies and leaves you to take care of your little sister before you’re old enough to legally drink you learn how to deal with a lot of shit really quickly. Particularly when that sister then takes after your admittedly terrible example of getting into trouble whenever possible. – And if he stressed about every single event afterwards, it’s not like anyone was doing to know about it. (Though Octavia did know, and possibly Miller, but definitely no one else.)

Still, he could deal with a crisis. It’s just that he could never have fathomed dealing with this particular crisis: that is, what to do when a vigilante turns up on your fire escape late at night with one hand pressed tightly to her abdomen trying to stop the bleeding. – Well, it’s not like he’d turned his corridor light on when he’d thought the noise was just a cat and only one of the three streetlights were currently working, but he would put money on the substance coating her glove (not to mention parts of her jacket and face) being blood. A lot of blood. She could actually be dying.

_What do you do if a vigilante dies on your fire escape?!_ Bellamy’s eyes grew wide for a second in horror, before he went into crisis management mode.

“Keep applying pressure to the wound,” he stated firmly, injecting calm into his tone, “I’ll just go get my phone to –“

“No!” she said, voice louder than he expected. “Help me inside,” she added, reaching for him with her free arm.

Personally Bellamy thought they could do that while they waited for the ambulance to arrive, but when she attempted to lift herself up from the staircase, he immediately moved to help her before she hurt herself further. “Jesus, take it easy,” he said, grabbing her shoulders through the open window and hoisting her upright, which was easier than it should have been. She was clearly trying to do a lot of the work herself which was crazy in her condition; he could see the blood more clearly now, and he could just make out something sticking out of the wound on her arm. Glancing back to her stomach he realised how she’d been injured just as she moved forward to dip her head into the apartment, forcing him to move backwards. “Have you been shot with arrows?” he asked, equal parts horrified and impressed as she used her left arm – the arm that had the broken end of an arrow sticking out two inches below her elbow – to lean against the window frame.

“Yes. Are you helping?” she prompted, leaning further into the apartment until she winced from the pain.

“I’m not sure what the best way is to do this,” Bellamy admitted, as he tried to figure out where to place his hands. “I don’t want to make it worse.”

“You won’t,” she stated, voice rough but firm. She placed her left hand on his shoulder, fingers curling into the fabric of his t-shirt for balance. “Just hurry up.”

“Okay.” Bellamy settled his hands under her armpits and unceremoniously hoisted her upwards until her upper body was inside his apartment, ignoring the pain he felt at the action (mostly as a result of her intense grip on his shoulder rather than the exertion of lifting her). At the same time, she lifted her knees so that she could put her feet on the ledge and managed to drop them down onto the apartment floor swiftly. However, Bellamy hadn’t been expecting that so soon and the sudden change in weight threw him off balance and they both tumbled to the floor. Bellamy landed on his ass, back kept upright by the nearby wall with legs splayed out in front of him, while she fell face forward, her head just next to his feet.

“I’m sorry – Fuck, your leg,” he said suddenly, noticing what looked disturbingly like another wound on the back of her right thigh, although the arrow wasn’t visible. Bellamy quickly jumped up and raced to his bedside table where his phone was currently charging. He ripped it out of the cord and grabbed the towel as well before he ran back to crouch next to his guest, who had somehow managed to flip herself over, though her face was contorted in pain.

He dropped the towel next to his knees after sitting down quickly, resting on his heels. Bellamy had keyed in the first two numbers when her eyes opened and her hand flew out to knock the phone out of his hand.

“No ambulance!”

“Are you crazy?” Bellamy practically yelled. “You’ve got arrows sticking out of you, you need a hospital. If you’re worried about the disguise we can do something about it before they get here,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Except, he got one. “No, I don’t need a hospital, you can help me.”

He got the sudden urge to laugh, though the really crazy thing was she didn’t appear to be joking. “This is way beyond a first aid kit,” he said, leaning to grab the phone but she swatted at his hand again.

“I’m serious, I just need you to help me remove the arrows, I’ll do the rest.”

“But you’ll need surgery, I don’t even know how you made it up those stairs by yourself, it’s – “

“Just trust me!” she interrupted, with far more strength than she should have had in her, all things considered. Her eyes looked wild behind the mask, but as she took in a shuddering breath they suddenly softened and he realised it was the first time he’d been close enough to see they were blue. “Please,” she said, lifting her hand up from her abdomen to show him the wound.

There wasn’t as much blood as he initially expected, but it still looked bad. Bellamy’s throat clenched as he placed the tips of his fingers on the blood soaking through her jacket, inching closer to the stub of the arrow as her hand slipped to the floor.

“Bellamy,” she whispered, “it’s okay.”

He actually did laugh at that, though he found himself curling his right hand around the arrow. “You’re the patient, Princess, shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”

“Just get it over with,” she said, a little breathless. “I am almost dying here.” His immediate response was to argue that was why he trying to get her an ambulance, but when he noticed the corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk Bellamy found himself convinced to listen to her.

Bellamy took a deep breath, trying to stop himself from questioning what he was about to do. Impulsively he grabbed the towel in his left hand, before cleanly pulling out the arrow and placing the towel firmly down on the wound as soon as he saw the tip of the arrowhead leave her skin.

He observed her hands clench for a second at the pain before her whole body visibly relaxed. She tilted her head in his direction, although her eyes remained closed. “You can move your hand Bellamy.”

“But – “

She sighed, opening her eyes, and Bellamy only had a moment to feel indignation at the fact that she looked annoyed at him trying to save her life when she used her right hand to push his hands away. He tried to stay firm but there was more force behind her actions than there had been moments before. Still, he wasn’t deterred from trying to stop the bleeding and moved his hands back.

“Look – “

“No, you look,” he started.

“No, I mean, look,” she stressed, this time taking hold of his wrist and keeping it in place to the side of her wound – or rather, where her wound had been.

Bellamy stared in shock as clear pale pink skin shone through the jagged hole in her jacket. One of his fingers started moving towards the old injury of its own accord, but before it could touch the skin he jerked his hand back, as if he’d been shocked.

“Did – did you just grow skin?” he blurted, though his brain was swarming with many other questions.

“I understand you’re confused, but do you mind if we finish first?” she asked, sitting up slightly as she tore the rip in her left jacket sleeve open wider so that the blood-stained skin around that wound was visible. “Hold the skin taut so I can pull this out,” she instructed.

“Uh, yeah.” Bellamy nodded, dropping the corner of the towel to use both hands and complied.

Once she managed to get her fingers over the stick, only barely still above her flesh, she yanked it out and dropped the arrow next to the first so they both sat on the end of the towel. Bellamy watched in fascination, stunned as the cut sealed itself right before his eyes, taking some blood droplets with it.

“But how – what – “ he stopped his stammering, not sure what he could even ask.

She grimaced a little, her expression altered now it was from awkwardness rather than physical pain. “Like I said, could we finish first?”

“Right.” Bellamy nodded, before trying to put in a confidence he didn’t feel into saying, “Okay, roll over so I can pull out the arrow in your leg.”

“Actually, that one’s a bullet.”

Bellamy paused as he studied her expression. “Shit, you’re not kidding.”

She shrugged, a hint of an apology on her face. “You got any tweezers? Or something you can use to root around in there?”

To his credit, Bellamy did manage to find the tools needed without further discussion, returning promptly to help his guest with her third and (he hoped) final injury. He felt an immense sense of relief once he watched the wound close up and the bullet rolled on the soft fabric of his towel to clink against the arrowheads. Crisis over. Bellamy was fully ready to freak out.

Because, seriously, _fuck_.

It would just help if he was sure what he was freaking out over.

“Are you – have you,” he started, rubbing a hand over his face as he struggled to come up with a coherent sentence.

Bellamy glanced up to find she’d moved herself into an upright sitting position, mirroring his as she crossed her legs and leaned against the opposite wall. The corridor wasn’t particularly wide and he’d had to turn the light on to help locate the bullet so this was actually the clearest he’d ever seen her, even though she’d put the hood back up. The thing that struck him most was the openness he saw in her face, in stark contrast to their previous meetings. The eye mask covered half her face, starting from above her eyebrows to the top of her nose, but her revealed light skin was blotched by streaks of dried blood (though he assumed it was someone else’s, seeing as how he’d just watched the blood on her skin disappear when her wounds had too). He could see her pale pink lips curled up in an amused smile as she observed him watching her, one hand playing with a lock of curly hair (the rest of which was tied together in a ponytail rather than her signature braid, he noted).

She was probably the prettiest girl he’d had in his apartment for a while, even if she wasn’t human.

“I have healing powers,” she said simply, clearly ready to break the silence although the pleasant smile remained.

“Right.” _Okay. That makes sense_ , Bellamy thought, before immediately correcting himself, _No, none of this makes sense._ “What, uh, does that mean exactly?” he asked, mainly because she was looking at him expectantly and he felt the need for a follow up.

“When I get injured, my body is able to repair the damage so it’s as good as new. Can’t do anything about the clothes though,” she added, and stuck a finger through the hole in her jacket sleeve to demonstrate.

Bellamy nodded, then furrowed a brow. “Can you die?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile, and shrug, as if they were just talking about the weather, “I mean, I think so. Healing powers don’t mean I can live forever.”

“But, if you can heal all your injuries or illnesses, wouldn’t it mean that?”

“I can’t just magically make the problem disappear. Like now, I had to remove the arrow – or the bullet – causing the injury before my body could heal completely. I made it here because I was nearby and my body was fighting the damage, but it couldn’t finish until I’d removed the problem. So if I’d got shot straight in the head, then I wouldn’t be able to heal. – I mean, I assume,” she added with a smirk. “We didn’t go that far in our testing.”

“Right,” Bellamy laughed, and realised he was smirking back. “Shouldn’t you invest in a helmet then?”

“We looked into that actually,” she said genuinely, “but it didn’t quite work. Hindered my sight too much. I’m definitely going to look into some body armour though.”

“Good idea. Will you grow old?” Bellamy wondered.

“I think so. Still testing that part out, but it looks like it won’t stop it.”

“But it could slow it down?” he guessed.

“Maybe a little, but…”

“You’re still testing,” he filled in. She inclined her head toward him with a small smile in lieu of a response. “Right. So…”

“So,” she repeated, but made no move to progress the conversation – nor to leave. Bellamy isn’t entirely sure what to do with that. He’s too used to her crashing in and out of his life precisely as she pleases, it’s a little disconcerting to feel like she’s waiting for him. He kind of likes it.

“You know there's been a lot of speculation about whether you had powers,” he told her, “but most people guessed you had superhuman strength.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have been able to make it here with those injuries if I didn’t,” she replied, bluntly. “That story about someone seeing me lift up a car with one hand is total bull though.”

“Right,” Bellamy said, briefly recalling hearing that one from his sister, though Octavia had doubted its authenticity too. “But, two hands, that’s do-able?”

She laughed genuinely, her face lighting up, eyes shining behind the mask. The wisps of blond hair flying around her face and the genuine tone in her voice softened her and for the first time Bellamy thought how young she looked. From their previous interactions he’d guessed her age to be around his, if not older, but she was definitely younger, possibly even close to Octavia’s age. “I haven’t actually tried that yet, but, I’ll let you know,” she responded to his joke.

The comment gave him another thought. “How did you even realise out you had the power to heal?”

She held his gaze at that, smile widening full of mirth. When she spoke, he was reminded of Octavia in high school, excitedly relaying recent gossip in secretive tones even though they were alone. “I got a paper cut.”

That was definitely not what Bellamy expected. “No,” he said incredulously.

She nodded, her smile even brighter. “I was sorting through some paperwork, felt the sting as I cut my finger, but by the time I looked at it, it had already started closing up.” She held up a finger as she said it as if it were evidence, even her hands were still gloved.

“That’s really…”

“Boring?” she supplied.

“Yeah,” he laughed, pushing his fringe back from his face. “I would have thought realising you had superpowers would be a bit more exciting than that.”

She giggled. “Me too.”

Bellamy grinned. “How long did it take you to realise you could do all this anyway?”

“Not long, I,” she began, about to say more when she suddenly paused, her face shuttering and Bellamy realised she was about to reveal more than she intended. “I should go,” she finished, glancing around at nothing, but it sounded more like it was something she thought she should say than something she wanted to, and it prompted him to argue the point.

“You were just shot.”

“Well, I’m all better now,” she shrugged. “It’s a surprisingly quick process.”

“Still, it probably wouldn’t hurt for you to get some rest,” he pointed out.

She shook her head. “I need to get back out there.” She stood up gracefully, no hint of her condition mere minutes ago. "I'll take these," she added, picking up the bloody bullet and arrows.

Wanting to keep the mood light, Bellamy joked, "Worried I’m going to hurt myself?" Though he winced at the line a moment later.

She didn’t seem to notice, intent on shoving the items into a pocket, answering him matter-of-factly. "I need to analyse them. The guys who attacked me got away, I'd like to fix that."

Right. Evidence. That he understood. "Well, I hope you catch them."

She nodded her head slightly and turned to the still open window.

“Wait,” he said, quickly standing up. “Uh, I know your thing is to slip out when I’m not looking, but could you just not do that tonight? I’ll just be one sec.”

Her lip quirked in amusement, but all she said was, “Okay.”

Bellamy went into his bedroom, and opened his wardrobe without really thinking, then came back out with his old navy waterproof jacket. He was a little relieved when he saw she was still standing there patiently even though she said she would be.

“Here. It’ll hide the worst of the blood stains.”

She took it slowly, her expression one of genuine surprised. “Thank you, Bellamy.”

He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly feeling awkward. “It doesn’t work – the zipper broke and, see, my mum taught us how to mend our clothes instead of throwing them out but I was always terrible at zips so she’d do that bit – “ Bellamy cut himself off, face flushing when he realised he’d started rambling. What was he doing telling a superhero about his dead seamstress mother and his frugal childhood? “Anyway, it’ll do the job. In case you’re spotted before you can change,” he added, unnecessarily.

She smiled softly at him and put the jacket on over her clothes with ease. “Thanks.”

Bellamy nodded. “Yeah. Uh, be careful.” And then he turned on his heel went back into his bedroom, hoping that it gave off an ease he didn’t feel.


	6. Chapter 6

_You’d think facing off against a bunch of criminals armed with guns and a freaking bow and arrow would be the scariest thing that happened to me tonight,_ Clarke thought as she walked across the base to join her friends. The three of them were huddled in their usual spot in front of the computers, Monty in his chair as Jasper and Raven stood on either side. She found Monty and Jasper’s matching expressions of concern sweet, if unnecessary, but Raven’s sharp gaze was chillier than the cold water she’d just splashed on her face.

Clarke had acted quickly upon noticing her assailants earlier, but thanks to the element of surprise one of them had managed to land a solid hit on her jaw. She’d recovered swiftly, of course, but not before she fell, dislodging her communications device from her ear onto the floor. In the ensuing scuffle the device had broken, blocking off her only method of contacting the rest of her team. It wouldn’t have been a problem if her injuries hadn’t been as serious, or awkwardly placed. Going to Bellamy hadn’t been an ideal solution, but it had been the best thing she could come up with in the circumstances. (And it wasn’t weird or anything that Clarke knew his schedule well enough to know he would be home then, it was necessary information for when they needed help. _Like tonight. So, well done me, basically._ )

After slipping out of Bellamy’s apartment Clarke had managed to make it to one of a number of secret locations across the city where they’d stored small packs of supplies for emergencies. She hadn’t even finished speaking to Monty when Jasper had appeared by her side to take her back to the base. Amongst their many questions, both had clearly been interested in the fact that Clarke had gone to Bellamy for help before she’d been able to make contact, but Clarke had been too desperate to change her clothes to go into more detail at the time.

Still, she wasn’t surprised that Raven, who had clearly been filled in while Clarke cleaned up, was the first to break the silence. “You’re definitely okay?”

Clarke nodded, softening. “Yeah. I’m fine, Raven. Promise,” she added, when her friend’s frown didn’t immediately subside.

Raven was not subtle about surveying Clarke for any lingering injuries, but she must have been satisfied with what she saw, folding her arms and straightening up. “Okay then. So Bellamy knows?”

“No. I couldn’t exactly hide my powers, but he doesn’t know it’s me.”

“Are you sure?” Raven asked. “I realise you’ve been careful before, but it would have been different tonight.”

“Not that we’re accusing you or anything,” Monty added quickly. “I mean, you were shot and I’m glad there was someone you could go to for help when you couldn’t reach us. We just need to be sure about how much he knows – about all of us.”

“Honestly, I think he was too surprised by the whole magic healing powers thing to be paying much attention to my face.”

“But he did get a good look at your face?” Jasper wondered.

“No, well – I mean, more so than usual but my mask was still on.”

“But Bellamy knows you. And he’s not stupid,” Raven pointed out.

“True. But it’s not like he sees me that often as _me_ anymore. I think if Bellamy had thought I looked familiar he would have said something; he asked plenty of other questions,” she continued. A small smile unknowingly graced Clarke’s features at the memory, though it turned into a wince as she watched her friends’ expressions change in response.

“What did he ask about?” Raven said.

“Nothing, just stuff about powers. You know, the kind of questions we had when we first realised we had our abilities.”

“And you told him?” Jasper asked. “About both of us?”

“No. I told him a little, but just about me!” Clarke insisted, which seemed to relax Jasper. “And I didn’t tell him anything important.”

“How do you know he’s not going to connect the dots?”

“It was nothing guys, just the silly paper cut story. Meaningless things like that,” Clarke said with a shrug, but even that felt like a lie because it hadn’t felt entirely meaningless. There had been something comfortable about sitting on Bellamy Blake’s apartment floor joking about her powers. She had enjoyed some truly amazing moments with her friends since she discovered her powers, as had Jasper, but those had been overshadowed since they first started on their venture. Talking to Bellamy earlier had felt simply…nice. But she wasn’t about to admit that. “Nothing he could get any information out of,” Clarke added.

“Okay. So, how long after he helped fix you up did you stick around for?”

“What? Raven,” she chastised.

“Hey, it’s a harmless question,” Raven said pointedly, belying the shrug that accompanied it. “I just find it interesting you started off complaining about us needing Bellamy’s help, and now you’re willingly hanging around for a chat.”

Clarke couldn’t help but smirk at her friend’s response. _Of course, Raven would be the one to pick that up._ Still, “It really wasn’t like that,” she argued, “and besides we have far more pressing matters to discuss. What happened with the police car after we split up?” Clarke asked, turning to Jasper.

“I followed them to this warehouse. Upstairs looked empty, but the downstairs was all boarded up so I couldn’t see inside. I started talking to you about it before I was going to go in, but when you didn’t respond I went back to the truck and found…well, nothing,” Jasper said, throwing his hands up in the air. “No truck, no you. Then, we were just trying to figure out what happened to you when you rang.”

“Sorry I worried you guys,” Clarke said gently, glancing at all of them, realising she hadn’t acknowledged that since her return.

“As long as you’re okay,” Monty said with a soft smile. “So I had a look at the police logs and it turns out it’s not the first time that particular car has gone off the grid, but it’s not the only one,” he informed Clarke, having already told the others. “I’m going through the records to see if I can find any patterns; and what I can find about the warehouse Jasper saw them drive into.”

“What happened with Wells?” Jasper wondered.

“His paper is running a story about a scandal at Griffin Industries.”

“What scandal?” Raven demanded.

Clarke sighed. “Exactly my question. Apparently he wanted to give me a heads up, but without actually giving anything away.”

“How cryptic.”

“You have weird friends,” Jasper noted, resting one hip against the desk.

“Well, she is friends with you,” Raven pointed out.

At Jasper’s pout, Monty cut in, “I can find out what it is, you know.” He swivelled his chair round to face the computer and his hands flew across the keyboard. “I’ve hacked onto Ark Daily’s servers before.”

“When did we need you to do that?”

“Err, it was more of a personal matter.”

“Oh yeah,” Jasper said, brightening, “we – “

Monty elbowed his friend’s knee causing Jasper to exclaim in mild pain.

Raven rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we need to do some work on your reflexes.”

“Okay that doesn’t count, I wasn’t expecting it. This is meant to be a safe space,” Jasper pouted.

“Can you find a copy of what they’re going to run tomorrow?” Clarke asked, stepping forward to lean over Monty’s right shoulder.

“Looking for – here’s the mock-up of tomorrow’s front page.”

They all moved closer, clustered around Monty, in order to look at the page as her expanded the window with the mock page on the center screen.

“Supplies going missing?” Jasper read aloud.

“Is that really top story news these days?” Monty wondered.

“Well, Griffin Industries is the biggest business in Ark; even a minor scandal at GI makes the news,” Raven pointed out. “Though I wouldn’t have thought Wells would write about it.”

“It does say this is just a recent incident out of many though, see?” Monty gestured to the section he’d reached in his perusal. “Did you know about any of this Clarke?” When she didn’t answer right away he turned his head round to look at her, concern clouding his features at the way Clarke’s expression had closed up. “Clarke?”

“Clarke, you alright?” Raven asked, as she and Jasper noticed as well.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, her tone slightly shaky. “It’s just, I…” Clarke pressed her lips together nervously. “Did any of you notice the article underneath, about the prison?”

The other three turned back to view the top portion of the article in question. “ ‘Prison Cash Shocker!’ ” Jasper began to read aloud, sniggering. “ ‘Mayoral Candidate Diana Sydney blames recent prison deaths on Mayor Jaha’s lack of funding.’ ”

“We looked into these, didn’t we?” Raven checked.

“Yeah,” Monty confirmed. “I didn’t find anything suspicious other than the fact that there’d been so many escalated brawls in a short space of time. But when they can’t afford enough guards…”

“I know,” Clarke said, “it’s just I hadn’t seen all the names of the men who died before.”

Curious, Monty started scrolling down the page to reveal the rest of the article, which was accompanied by photos of the prisoners in question. He hadn’t reached the bottom when they all heard Raven’s sudden sharp intake of breath. After a quick glance to their left, Monty and Jasper both turned back to look at Clarke, who still seemed a little dazed.

“Clarke?” Monty prompted.

She took a deep breath, trying to draw some comfort from the hand that Raven had just placed on her forearm. “The man on the left, he went to jail for robbery, but I think – I mean, I’m pretty sure – he killed my Dad.”

* * *

“How could you not tell me?!”

Bellamy wasn’t fast enough to block the mild punch she threw at his shoulder. Mild because, thanks to her new boyfriend, it wasn’t anywhere near her full capacity – though that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. “Ow! Octavia! Come on, calm down,” he said as he leaned against his kitchen counter. He had gone back and forth on his decision to tell his sister about his involvement with Ark’s vigilantes, especially after last night’s…incident, but Bellamy had ultimately decided the truth (albeit, a limited amount) was the best move. He’d been in two minds about how Octavia might react, though he hadn’t expected physical violence. (To be fair, he probably should have. He’d been the one who had to pick her up from those drunken bar fights, after all.)

“Don’t tell me to calm down. You’ve been running around town with superheroes and didn’t tell me!” she complained.

“I was trying to protect you!”

Octavia rolled her eyes. “Not that bullshit again.”

“And I haven’t been running around anywhere,” he continued, scooting further away from his sister when she looked likely to argue, “more like I provided them with some…office-based assistance.”

“So, what, you’re their PA?” she sassed, hands on hips.

“Look, O, I can’t go into details, I just…I just wanted you to know.” Octavia huffed, as she mirrored his position against her side of the counter, leading Bellamy to add, “I thought you were a fan of their work.”

“I was – I mean, I am. And to be honest, I always found it odd how you seemed weird about them when you can’t resist saving people either, big brother,” she said pointedly, which Bellamy responded to with an eye-roll. Octavia raised her eyebrows right back at him and glared, until Bellamy gave a slight shrug.

_Maybe she did have a point._

Octavia threw him a small smile. “I guess there’s no point me telling you to stop.”

“Do you really think I should?” he asked, and she considered it for a moment.

“I want you to be safe – don’t give me that look,” she said, her voice raising suddenly before she reached over to swat his arm in response to the massive grin that overtook Bellamy’s face.

“I can’t help it, O,” he replied, and he really couldn’t. “Now you finally know how I felt, every time I gave you that line.”

“Yes, but you always used to use that line over stuff like boys and parties,” she snapped, “You know, overprotective, stupid concerns –“

“Valid concerns,” Bellamy interrupted.

“Ridiculous, controlling concerns,” she countered, folding her arms again and parsing her lips in a look that Bellamy knew better than to argue with. “But what you’re involved in is actually dangerous. Though you are right that I don’t disagree with the cause.” Octavia blew out a harsh breath before looking him right in the eyes. “You really trust them?”

Bellamy had to pause before answering, though not as long as he would have done 24 hours ago. “Yeah, I really do.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, you’re probably already aware of it, but if not, you should know that the police are trying to put together a case against them.”

“I heard about it from one of my colleagues; how do you know?”

“I’ve actually met up with Miller recently, remember? He couldn’t talk about it in detail, but he did mention it. – I realise it’s not going to stop you, just try to keep yourself out of that. Nothing to tie yourself to them, no evidence.”

“Right, no –“ Bellamy paused, but soon recovered, “no evidence.”

Octavia raised an eyebrow at that. “You’re sure.” It was a statement, but her eyes were questioning.

“I am,” Bellamy said, perhaps too quickly. “I’ll make sure,” he emphasised. “Now, can we finally get round to having dinner?”

She huffed, but relented. “Okay. But I’m not helping you with cooking.”

“Like you’d help anyway,” he said cheekily, laughing when Octavia replied by sticking out her tongue.

The rest of Octavia’s visit passed rather pleasantly, all things considered, the two siblings simply enjoying a nice meal in front of the television as they’d done in that apartment many times over the years. They even managed to avoid returning to the subject of superheroes (probably by Bellamy controlling the remote and avoiding the news), though Bellamy could tell Octavia was considering bringing it up just before she left. He took her simple “Be careful” as a win. Her reaction had probably been as good as he could have hoped for and now he didn’t have to worry about not being honest with her.

Well, apart from one thing.

As soon as Octavia had left, Bellamy walked past the dirty plates he’d insisted he’d take care of himself and into his bedroom to open the laundry hamper. He pulled out a few items from the top until he got to the towel he’d used last night, the one that he’d had in his hands when his surprise guest had turned up.

When he had woken up that morning (after admittedly little sleep, most of the night spent tossing and turning as he tried to process what he’d seen) Bellamy had left his bedroom and realised he’d left the towel on the corridor floor. Bleary-eyed and in need of the toilet, he’d tossed the item backwards into his bedroom, absently stuffing it into the hamper with his dirty clothes a bit later when he’d gotten dressed for work. Now when he looked at it closely, he noticed the towel had a number of blood stains on it. He went back into the corridor and inspected the carpet, managing to find two small spots of blood ingrained near the wall as well.

Bellamy remembered seeing blood seep back into her skin as the wounds closed up (it wasn’t a sight he would forget easily) but she must have spilled enough blood before that for it to stain a little. He wasn’t worried about removing the marks from the carpet but on examining the number of stains on the towel Bellamy couldn’t decide if it would be worth attempting to wash them out.

As he was deciding how he could dispose of it safely if he did choose to just throw it away, Bellamy was struck with a third option – send it to the crime lab to trace the blood sample.

It made sense the more he thought about it. While there was no guarantee it would provide a hit in the database it was the first credible way he had of finding out her identity. He could do it quietly too – Miller had put him in touch with Asher at the crime lab when he’d needed help before so he knew Asher would keep things quiet. If there was a result, he could pass the information on to Miller.

Then he thought back to last night; her sitting across him on the floor, smiling and laughing as she told him about her powers.

Bellamy bunched up the towel with the rest of his dirty clothes and took the lot over to his washing machine.


	7. Chapter 7

“Get out of the way!”

“I’m trying to help!”

“Hovering is not helping,” the first voice replied through gritted teeth.

Clarke cleared her throat, before sharing a knowing look with Monty, currently sat across from her in front of the computer. She turned towards their arguing companions, calling out, “Everything okay back there guys?”

“Can one of you give Jasper something to do so he stops bothering me?” Raven replied.

“Ignore her, she’s just annoyed the design’s not working.”

“It will work, I just need space to finish welding this,” Raven said sharply, before she and Jasper went back to discussing the minutiae of their new costume designs. After what had happened to Clarke, they’d all agreed that the costumes needed upgrading with more protective features. Unfortunately, Raven and Jasper kept disagreeing on how they were incorporating said features into the clothing.

“Ten bucks says Raven knocks him out before they finish either of your costumes.”

Clarke laughed and shook her head. “If not for Jasper’s powers, that actually would’ve happened a few times before you got here, so definitely not taking that bet.” Monty chuckled and returned to looking at the screen, prompting Clarke to ask, “Anyway, where were we?”

In between fielding calls asking her to comment on Wells’ article (yet another reason Clarke was glad she’d convinced her mother to let her set up her own lab, away from the company HQ), Clarke and Jasper had analysed the bullet Bellamy had extracted from her leg as well as the arrows, though they didn’t get any concrete leads from either. The specialist arrowhead wasn’t officially sold anywhere in Ark, and so far Monty hadn’t been able to track any online orders of the item. Even the police logs hadn’t been helpful when they’d tried to look into the cars that had gone off the grid as further research into the records had revealed that every car on the system was marked as having gone offline more than once over the past four months.

“I’ve been looking into how the tracking system was initially set up – “

“Anything we need to know about it?” Raven asked as she and Jasper joined them, having apparently taken a break from their tasks.

Monty nodded. “I was just about to tell Clarke that I managed to speak to one of the guys who designed the system.”

“What did he say?” Jasper wondered.

“Not a lot,” Monty told them. “When I mentioned the possibility of a defect he got really weird. He – “

“Wait, did you speak to Kyle Wick?” Raven exclaimed, pointing to one of the smaller windows up on Monty’s screen with his contact information. “He set up the system?”

“Yeah – well, he’s one of the people who worked on it, but he’s the only one I’ve been able to get on the phone so far. You know him?”

“Yes!” Raven nodded, then rolled her eyes. “He was in my engineering classes at college. If that idiot worked on their system then I could actually believe the bug was real.”

“Except, I’ve been studying the pattern and it’s too perfect,” Monty said. “Each incident lasts an identical amount of time and occurs within similar intervals on each vehicle – a real bug would be more random.”

“Not forgetting that we did actually see the police pick up a criminal in the time they were off the grid,” Jasper pointed out, “so it’s probably working fine but people are disabling it manually.”

“If it’s that easy to disable manually, then I stand by my assessment of Wick’s work.”

“I can’t believe that everyone is in on it,” Clarke said, “but if it’s only a few people then surely someone would spot them tampering with the other cars.”

Monty shook his head. “I think it’s simpler than that. The logs are electronic only because they’re meant to feed in to the computer automatically. But anyone with the right skills would be able to change the readings on the logs after the fact. That way, they only need to disable the cars they’re in when they need to and then afterwards to make all them all the same length of time and look as if it’s happening to everyone, even though it’s not.”

“Did you tell Wick that when you spoke to him?” Clarke asked.

“No. I figured it was safest to lead with a potential bug but as soon as I said that he got kind of defensive –“

“Typical,” Raven muttered, folding her arms.

“Yeah, but having dealt with people who’ve written shit software before, normally when you tell them something’s wrong with it they rush to tell you how great it is and how wrong you are,” Monty pointed out. “With Wick, it was like he couldn’t get me off the phone fast enough. To be honest, it kind of made me wonder if he has something to do with this.”

Raven’s brow furrowed, as Clarke wondered, “Did he sound suspicious?”

Monty shrugged. “It just sounded like he was holding back, you know? Plus, whoever is disconnecting their cars from the system has to know enough about it to do that right? Who knows it better than someone who designed and installed it?”

“No way,” Raven said firmly, shaking her head. “I mean, I believe his system wouldn’t work, or he wouldn’t set it up correctly,” she corrected, with an eye roll, “but not on purpose. Wick’s an idiot, but I don’t see him being involved in something that shady.”

“You said there were other people who worked on it too?”

“Yeah the records show that the system was Wick’s invention and he installed it on certain cars during testing, but between testing and rolling it out completely he was replaced. Three people worked on the design and install in total, including Wick.”

“Maybe the other two were the ones who set it up so that it could be turned off then?”

“Doesn’t explain why he was weird when Monty asked him about it though,” Jasper pointed out. “If he just left or got fired, wouldn’t he just say that?”

“Why don’t you talk to him?” Clarke suggested, turning in her chair to look at Raven. “Maybe he’ll tell you what’s going on.”

Raven looked away and shrugged her shoulders. “We’re not close or anything. It’s been a few months since I spoke to him, and that was just at one of Luke’s game nights.”

“True, but if he knows more than he’s letting on, he’s more likely to tell you about it than Monty.”

Raven didn’t look completely convinced, but said, “Yeah, okay. Luke’s having another game night this Friday. I told him I wasn’t sure if I’d make it, but Wick’s going to be there so I guess it wouldn’t seem suspicious if I started talking to him then.”

Jasper whooped, raising his hands with a smile. “Wa-hey, game night!”

Raven glanced at him, folding her arms. “Yeah, you guys aren’t invited.”

Clarke bit back a laugh at the way Jasper’s face fell suddenly. “If it makes you feel any better Jasper, I’ve never been invited to game night’s with Raven’s engineering friends either, even though I met a lot of them at college.”

“That’s only because I was trying to spare you from their weirdness,” Raven explained. “But that’s not why Jasper can’t come.”

“Fine,” he pouted. “Game night at mine and Monty’s place on Friday and only Clarke can come.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” Monty said, a small smile on his face.

“Well, you were obviously included,” Jasper said, “you’ll be there anyway.”

“I feel so wanted.”

“As much fun as that sounds, Friday nights have been pretty busy for us recently,” Clarke pointed out. “I was planning on spending most of the weekend here to make it easier to keep an eye on things.”

“Then this is where Jasper and I will be too,” Monty stated. “Right?” he added, after a beat.

Jasper sighed. “Fine. But I’m bringing some games to play while we wait.”

* * *

 

_Looks like a fun weekend ahead_ , Bellamy thought, mentally going over his plans of reading, working and feeding his neighbours’ cat.

He was actually only being slightly sarcastic about it. In truth, Bellamy really was looking forward to his reading, and he didn’t mind feeding Natalie while his neighbours enjoyed a weekend away, though as he rooted around their kitchen cupboard looking for the cat food he couldn’t help but think things like this were the reason Octavia worried about him.

Well, this and one other very specific thing.

But, still. At least, it wasn’t _his_ cat. – Or maybe that would be better. If he was going to be a boring, old cat man already, it was better to own it right?

An insistent meow by Bellamy’s left foot reminded him someone would prefer for him to save these introspective musings until after he’d completed his task.

“Just a second, Nat.” Bellamy bent over to pour the food out into her bowl, and she quickly started eating when he was done.

As Bellamy put the box back in the cupboard he heard a slight noise from outside on the main landing, as if someone was approaching the apartments. There were only two apartments on the floor, including his own, and since his neighbours had left that afternoon it made sense that the visitor would be for him. Not that he was expecting anyone, but that had never stopped her.

Bellamy walked quickly to the door and opened it wide. “Miller!”

“Bellamy, hey,” his friend replied, the surprise on his face soon replaced by an easy smile that Bellamy tried to return.

It wasn’t hard; he was genuinely happy to see Miller. It really had been a while – too long, honestly, considering Miller had been his best friend ever since Bellamy and Octavia had moved into the building and he still lived close by. So, this _was_ a nice surprise. Bellamy just wished he hadn’t felt that initial clutch of disappointment in his stomach when the visitor turned out not to be a certain someone he hadn’t seen since he’d watched her rapidly recover from life-threatening injuries. Not that it had been that long since he’d seen her – it had been much longer since he’d seen Miller. Who was still stood right in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” Bellamy wondered.

“What are you doing _here_?” Miller asked, as he adjusted the strap of his backpack and moved closer to the doorway. “I know I haven’t been over in a while, but I think I can remember where my parents live.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes, moving back so Miller could enter, “Your parents asked me to feed Natalie while they’re away this weekend,” he explained.

“Oh shit, that was this weekend?” Miller scratched at his beanie as he started sorting through the pile of mail on the side table by the entrance. “Dad said some of my mail ended up here last week, I just didn’t have time to get it until today.”

“And here I thought you were coming over to make sure Natalie wasn’t lonely while her parents were away,” Bellamy said with a smirk, leaning against the armrest of the couch.

On cue, Natalie, abandoned her meal to scamper over to Miller and rubbed up against the side of his leg, happy to see him.

“Haha,” Miller grumbled, just before he leaned down to scratch the top of her head.

“I’m totally giving your parents some brother and sister photos of the two of you for Christmas.”

“Don’t start. My mum said she’s taken up knitting so she can knit us all gifts this year and Dad thinks she’s knitting us matching scarves. As in, all four of us,” he said seriously.

Bellamy responded with a snort, as Miller glared at him. “It’s not that funny.”

“It really is.”

Miller picked up a second pile of mail, while Bellamy tried to recover from his laughter, and some newspapers fell out of his grasp. “Seriously, why do they still get the paper when they just shove it with the junk mail and all the other crap they don’t read?” Miller said, picking up the papers and tossing them at Bellamy who had just about settled down.

Bellamy shrugged before he glanced at the one that had landed on his lap. It was face up on a photo of Walden’s Council representative Diana Sydney on a podium, accompanied by a quote where she criticised Mayor Jaha for taking too long to replace the supplies recently stolen from the under-resourced Walden General, while Ark Hospital in the city centre had more than enough to spare. Bellamy had been to Ark Hospital a few times while working on cases, and he wouldn’t have called its resources “plentiful” but he thought her general point still stood. And it was certainly better than what DA Marcus Kane, her opponent in the upcoming mayoral election, had said, criticising the theft while still managing to suck up to Jaha.

The thing that weighed most in Bellamy’s mind at that moment however, was the date of the theft as it reminded him of what had happened to him that night and, as a result, the main reason he’d kind of been avoiding Miller.

“So…how’ve you been?”

Miller shrugged. “Busy. Work’s been...” he paused for a moment, scratching the back of his neck with a grimace, “difficult.”

Bellamy had guessed as much based on what he’d heard from other officers he crossed paths with, and what Octavia had mentioned, but for Miller to actually say so straight off meant it was probably awful.

“What’s going on?” Bellamy asked.

Miller considered for a moment, then shook his head, shuffling on his feet enough that Natalie became annoyed and wandered off. “I don’t want to get into it, man. Just loads of weird shit all happening at once, you know?”

Bellamy definitely knew about “weird shit” lately. But suddenly talking to his old friend it didn’t feel like it needed to weigh him down as much as it had been. “You on shift tonight?” he asked.

Miller shook his head. “Nah, just finished. I had been hoping I could just grab dinner off my folks so I didn’t have to bother deciding on a meal myself, but I guess I picked the wrong day for that.”

“You can grab dinner off me if you like?” Bellamy offered. “I was just about to go back to my apartment and start cooking.”

Miller smiled, hoisting the strap of his bag further up his shoulder as he stuffed the chosen envelopes into it. “Awesome. I knew there was a reason I was still friends with you.”

* * *

 

_I should not be doing this_ , Clarke thought adamantly as she made her way over the rooftops of Walden until she reached the building she was heading for. _I really shouldn’t be doing this_ , she repeated as she delicately manoeuvred down the fire escape and stopped outside the apartment she wanted to visit.

_Wanted to_ , that was the problem. Did she really _need_ to?

None of their leads had panned out so far, and the feeling of going round in circles was getting frustrating. Raven had seen Wick the previous night, but hadn’t got any information out of him yet. While Bellamy didn’t have any new cases that tied in specifically to what they were looking into, he had a lot more first-hand experience with the police than they did so he could have noticed something. And if he hadn’t, surely it was a good idea to make him aware of what was going on, so that he could keep an eye out for any information. – Okay, so that was a really tenuous reason, but it was _something_. Plus, she was in the neighbourhood already, having just prevented a mugging, and there wasn’t anything wrong with making a quick stop before she went back to the base.

The window was only slightly ajar, but her special skills made it easy to open quickly and quietly, before she slipped into the apartment. The three doors beside her were shut but a lot of light was coming from the other end of the corridor. She found and pushed the button on her belt that would turn them off.

The whole place stuttered into darkness, followed by a small chuckle.

“Hi,” his voice filtered through just before a glimmer of light appeared from that direction.

Clarke took a deep breath and turned on the voice modulator to disguise her voice, before walking slowly down the corridor to find Bellamy sitting on his couch in a t-shirt, sweatpants and glasses ( _Since when did he wear glasses? – Not important, Griffin_ ). He held a book in one hand and his phone in the other, and she could just make out an amused smile on his face.

“Oh, it is you,” he said, and sounded a little relieved. “For a second there I thought maybe the power had just gone out and I was talking to myself.

Clarke allowed herself a smile. “It’s me. I see you’ve ditched the flash light,” Clarke said, noting the faint light emanating from his phone that he’d slid onto the coffee table.

“Yeah, one of my colleagues didn’t understand why I was keeping a flash light in my desk drawer. After I’d gone to the effort of making up this elaborate cover story about how the fuse kept blowing at the office when I was working late, they explained that they’d just wondered why I didn’t use the app instead,” he made a face as he’d finished as if technology was this weird thing he didn’t understand and it made her laugh.

“Well, at least you’ve learnt something new.”

Bellamy smiled and tipped his head slightly. “I see you upgraded your costume.”

She glanced down at her new outfit that Raven and Jasper had just finished that morning. On the outside they’d kept the design largely similar to the previous, with the addition of metal armoured plates on portions of the arms and bodice. In addition, they’d integrated sensors into the fire-resistant material to monitor her and Jasper’s vitals so that even if they weren’t able to contact Monty, he’d be able to see if they’d sustained any serious injuries.

“The armour’s a nice touch,” he said, gaze lingering a little, before looking directly away.

“Well, after last week it seemed a lot of improvements were in order. With the changes, I shouldn’t need to bother you again.”

“Oh, right. Well, that’s good,” Bellamy replied, a little stiffly. Clarke had meant the comment in jest, but his reaction made her wonder if the voice modulator altered her tone too much for him to tell. He sounded more formal when he continued, “So, what business brings you here tonight?”

Right. Business. She definitely had some. “We have reason to believe some of the police force have been involved in the recent spike of criminal activity.”

“What?” Bellamy exclaimed, his grip tightening around the book in his right hand, and Clarke caught a glimpse of the words ‘Roman Empire’ in the title. “You think the police are the ones who’ve been committing the crimes?”

“Not necessarily committing, but definitely involved. I believe you call it ‘aiding and abetting’.”

Bellamy rubbed his face in frustration before looking back at her carefully. “What exactly constitutes ‘reason to believe’?”

She hadn’t really discussed how much she would tell Bellamy with the others ( _probably because you didn’t tell them you were coming over_ ), but there wasn’t really any point lying to Bellamy about this bit, right? “On the night of the theft I watched a police car drive off with the two men that hijacked the truck outside Walden General.”

Bellamy’s eyes grew wide, clearly well aware that no one had been brought in for that crime yet. “Jesus. Did you see their faces? Could you ID them?”

“Possibly. I’m trying to.”

“You should go to the police station. I know it’s not your usual method,” he added, “but if you told them whatever you remembered of the men, they could check it against their database.”

Clarke paused, then decided that telling him they hacked into police files probably wouldn’t be a big shocker, considering everything else he’d been privy to. “I have access to their database. We couldn’t find a match.”

Bellamy let out a slow breath through his nose. “Right. I should have guessed,” he said, a wry smile on his lips. “Wait, that was the night you came here – are they the ones that shot you?”

“Friends of theirs.”

Bellamy nodded. “Do you, uh, feel okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“After getting shot? No…side effects?”

He looked awkwardly around him as he asked, but he actually looked concerned. Clarke had to actively bite back a smile before she replied, “I’m fine. Thanks.” And then, because she was here on professional business after all, “I don’t suppose you can shed any light on the police matter?”

“I…I might have heard that things have been difficult on the force lately, more so than usual….” He paused, as if searching for the right words, “Weird…stuff going on.”

“What kind of weird stuff?”

“I don’t know. Honestly,” he added, after Clarke raised an eyebrow and it surprised her because between the hood and the dim light emanating from his phone she didn’t think he could see her clearly enough to observe minor facial cues. Unless he just read her pause correctly.

She took a step further back just to be sure. “Anything you can think of, that you might have heard? Anyone in particular you think we should look into?”

Bellamy looked like he was genuinely considering it before he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. I’ve met a lot of the guys on the force, but I don’t know most of them well. And the only one that I do is my friend Miller, and he would never be involved with something like that.”

Clarke nodded, then recalled, “Nathan Miller, right? He’s a Detective?”

“Uh, yeah,” Bellamy replied, with an expression of surprise that quickly disappeared. “Guess I forgot there’s no keeping secrets from you.” Clarke actually knew that from previous conversations with Octavia, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” and he looked genuinely regretful as opposed to the sarcasm that accompanied similar comments when she first started coming to him for assistance.

Clarke decided that was the reason her next words slipped through.

“That’s okay. I just wanted your opinion.”

That was a mistake, Clarke was certain, when he grinned widely at her. “Yeah?” he said, eyes brightening behind the thick dark frames of his glasses.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she grumbled and stalked off down his apartment corridor, intending to slip out the window without giving him the chance to respond. She heard his soft, “Goodnight,” just before she shut it behind her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it's actually a whole year since I posted the first chapter of this! Thanks very much to all those who have commented and liked this fic in that time! :) I love getting your feedback. This update should really have been up earlier as I've had most of it written for at least a month but it's the first time I've written any real action scenes and I was nervous about that (even as minor as the one here is) so when I had the time to work on fic I just kept tinkering with it.  
> Speaking of action scenes, here's another warning for mild violence (i.e. fight scene, but on par with/less violent than canon) plus language. I probably won't keep putting one in front of every chapter that features them; there will be more fight scenes (they are crime-fighting superheroes after all) but they will be infrequent and spread out.  
> Anyway, thanks again for reading and please let me know what you thought!

“Are you going to be staying late at work?”

“I’m actually just leaving work now, mom,” Clarke said on the phone, only partially lying. She was in the act of putting away her lab equipment for the day, but she wasn’t going to be leaving the building.

“Do you have plans tonight?”

“Just hanging out with Raven,” Clarke said, another lie slipping easily from her lips.

“Well, have a nice evening and tell Raven I say hello,” Abby replied.

“You too. Speak to you soon.” Once they’d said goodbye Clarke took off her lab coat and left work to go downstairs and join Monty, as Jasper had done about twenty minutes earlier when their friend had arrived.

She was surprised to see Monty by himself, but before she could question him, he spoke into his microphone. “It should be on your left.”

“What happened?” Clarke said, increasing her pace as soon as she took in the scene, moving to stand behind Monty’s chair. “Do I need suit up?”

Monty looked over his right shoulder at her, his expression slightly sheepish. “Er, no, that’s not…necessary. I hope,” he added, to himself.

“What are we watching?” she asked, noticing the videos on his screens appeared to be feed from security cameras. Both videos showed what appeared to be the same empty desk, until one was suddenly occupied by a fast-moving blur Clarke knew had to be Jasper. The other remained empty.

“Is Jasper outside the holding cells at the police station?” Clarke wondered, observing some of the notices on the board behind the desk, as well as the nearby metal bars.

“The prison, actually. I needed to check their visitor log books, but they only keep a hard copy. I created a distraction so Jasper could run over and get the information.”

Clarke’s grip on Monty’s chair instinctively tightened ever so slightly, but with her strength it was enough for the wheels to jerk him backward closer to her.

“Hey!”

“What kind of distraction?”

“A technical fault. Not a big one, just something to make sure the desk was empty for a minute. It’s under control,” Monty insisted, wheeling back so that his legs were under his desk. “I’ve looped the security tapes from earlier so no one can see that footage of Jasper except us,” he explained, pointing to the first video that hadn’t changed since Clarke had arrived. “Jasper’s just going to take some pictures of the info we need. Nothing to worry about. See,” he added with a smile, when the blur disappeared off the screen and moments later zoomed in through the back entrance to form in front of them.

“Hey guys!” Jasper greeted them.

“Did you get it?” Monty asked.

“I took a photo of the pages for that whole month, just to make sure,” Jasper replied and dropped the camera onto the table.

“You sure it wasn’t just to show off?” Monty wondered, to which Jasper only responded with a grin before racing off to the back of the room so he could change out of his upgraded black suit.

“What did you need to see in the log book?” Clarke asked, sitting down just as Jasper re-joined them, now in his jeans and t-shirt.

“I was watching the security tapes from the prison again, trying to see if there’s anything we missed,” Monty explained. “Last time I watched them we didn’t know the cops might be part of the problem.”

“Oh,” Clarke realised, “And you found something?”

Monty nodded, as he hooked up the small camera to the computer and started downloading the photos. “You remember our cop friends, Connors and Dax?”

“Sure.” How could she forget? Monty had identified the police car Clarke and Jasper had seen aid the people who’d stole the hospital delivery truck as being driven by Officers Ian Connors and Darren ‘Dax’ Newton at the time.

“Well, Dax went to the prison by himself the same day the last suspicious death took place, and there’s no indication of why,” Monty said as he started clicking through the photos. “I can only find him on the tapes at the front desk so I can’t tell where he went or who he saw, but I wanted to check if his name was on the books. It doesn’t look like he actually signed in on the tape. Here it is…look, his name’s not there.”

“Yes!” Jasper exclaimed. “I mean, not _‘yay, he’s corrupt’_ but this is evidence right? Finally.”

“I’m not sure it’s enough though. What do we know about the guard on duty? Maybe they’re friends and he forgot to write his name down.”

“He stops at the desk to talk for a while,” Monty pointed out, loading the tape so that Clarke could see for herself, “On his way in and out. They could be friends, but they’d be friends who are up to no good.”

“Kind of makes them sound more like Scooby Doo style villains than corrupt government workers involved in a massive conspiracy,” Jasper mused, “Although Scooby Doo actually –“

“Please don’t go into a Scooby Doo tangent right now,” Monty said, a pained look on his face.

Jasper pouted, but then turned to Clarke. “We can do something with this right?”

“Maybe,” she said. “It’s not much, but it is suspicious. Still, the normal thing to do would be to go to the cops but we can’t just drop it off at the front desk when we don’t know who else is involved. We’d have to give it to someone directly, someone like – “

“Bellamy.”

“What?” Clarke asked, unsure why she could feel a slight pink tinge colouring her cheeks at Jasper’s suggestion.

“We should give the evidence to Bellamy. He’s a lawyer and we can obviously trust him,” Jasper explained, clearly looking pleased with himself for the idea.

“Except he’s a defence attorney,” Monty pointed out. “Wouldn’t we have to go to a prosecutor? And what would our case be anyway?”

“Oh. But still, Bellamy would know what to do with it, right? Or who to give it to? I mean – “

“Miller,” Clarke interrupted.

“What?” Jasper said, the same time Monty asked, “Who?”

“Detective Nathan Miller. Bellamy said we can trust him,” Clarke said with conviction.

“Okay.” Monty turned to the computer and quickly tapped out a few commands. “Looks like he’s on shift tonight.”

“Could you make a CD of the evidence so that I could give it to him? What?” Clarke added at Monty’s incredulous look.

“A CD?” Monty said, looking even more shocked than when she had demonstrated her powers to him. “Do you want to draw more attention to the highly sensitive evidence?”

“He means he’ll put it on a flash drive,” Jasper said, shaking his head. “So, what’s the plan? I mean if you and Bellamy are saying he’s a good cop that’s cool, but the cops are still under orders to arrest us on sight. I really don’t want to get arrested.”

“We’ll go together; try and get him alone somehow,” Clarke thought aloud as she tried to formulate a plan in her head. “Then once I’ve told him just enough of the information you drop the drive into his hand and we both make a quick exit.”

Jasper nodded. “But how do we lure him out into the open without anyone noticing?”

“Okay, that sounded really creepy,” Raven exclaimed from the top of the stairs, staring down at them all with a stern expression. “What are you guys talking about?”

 

Once Raven had joined them and been properly filled in, the four of them formulated a plan. As both Dax and his partner Connors were also on duty that evening, they decided to wait until Miller’s shift was over and catch up to him on his way home. In the meantime they patrolled the city, Raven driving around in her car, with Clarke and Jasper joining her except for when they dashed off to break up any disturbances that Monty picked up on the police scanner.

The night ticked along rather steadily, and after preventing a mugging just outside the subway station, Raven bought them all sandwiches from a nearby vendor. Jasper took his and Monty’s sandwiches so he could race back to the base to drop the latter’s off, leaving Raven and Clarke alone in her car to eat their dinner.

“So,” Raven said, a few bites later, “this Detective Miller you’re going to see tonight. He’s Bellamy’s friend isn’t he?”

“He is,” Clarke said evenly.

“Anything you’ve forgotten to tell me?” Raven asked.

After a beat, “My mom says hi.”

“Real smooth, Griffin.” Raven smirked, but seemed to decide to let it slide. “So is Abby cutting her trip short then?”

Clarke nodded while she finished her current mouthful. “The board is getting antsy about all this media attention, especially with mom planning to take a step back.”

“Do you think she won’t now?”

Clarke shrugged. “She wants to see how it plays out.”

“Do you think it would be better if she didn’t take a step back from the board?” Raven wondered. “I mean, Abby did talk about wanting to research…well, you, basically.”

“Yeah, but if someone really is stealing from GI I don’t want that to continue.”

“We talked about this, it’d draw too much suspicion on you if you looked into it yourself.”

“I know,” Clarke said, a little sourly, “but it just seems like a waste. This is one time we wouldn’t even be hacking into anything to look at evidence, I could literally just log in.”

“And then you would _literally_ be investigated by the internal auditors. We really don’t want to give them a reason to visit the lab.”

“I know,” Clarke repeated, and tried not to sound so put out about it.

“Monty still might find out who Wells’ sources are,” Raven said, appeasing. “You could visit them in disguise. We just can’t seem closer to the case than any others.”

Clarke nodded, but any other thoughts she had on the matter would have to wait as they were interrupted by Monty. Raven put his call on speaker and they heard him say, “A body’s been found a few blocks over from where you are now. Suspected drug overdose. Detective Miller’s just left the precinct to respond.”

“You think we should give him the drive now?” Raven wondered.

“No – maybe. It’s just that Connors and Dax are the ones that called it in.”

“You think something’s wrong,” Clarke realised.

“I looked up the address they gave, it’s off their patrol route by a couple of blocks,” Monty explained. “They said they went to check it out because someone on the street flagged their car down saying they saw something suspicious, but left before giving a proper statement.”

“If you want to report something but don’t want to hang around cops, why not just call it in anonymously instead of finding one in person?” Raven thought, catching Clarke’s eye who nodded in agreement.

“Exactly,” Monty said. “It’s just a feeling, but it doesn’t seem to add up. I know we’ve been mainly avoiding crime scenes once the police are already there but I think it’s worth checking out.”

Before Clarke or Raven could respond they both jumped in their seats when there was a sharp knock on Raven’s window.

“Jesus Jasper!” Raven yelled as she rolled down her window. “You know I have a gun, right?”

His mask made it hard to see his expression, but the shrug of his shoulders appeared somewhat apologetic. “I thought I’d take Clarke over to the crime scene.”

“I’ll meet you guys there,” Raven agreed. “Try not to get too close.”

“You too,” Clarke said, before pulling her hood up and getting out of the car, barely hearing Raven tell Monty to send her the co-ordinates as Jasper whisked the two of them away to the crime scene.

He pulled up in an alley on the opposite side of the road; close enough to see the bright yellow tape that cordoned off the crime scene, but too far for an ordinary person to make out the faces of any of the officers present.

Good thing they had superpowers.

“Shouldn’t there be more cops around if they’ve found a dead body?” Jasper wondered, noticing there were two police officers outside the building.

“It’s pretty deserted around here, they’re probably not expecting many passers-by. Plus, we’ve had a busy night, I’m guessing they have too,” Clarke thought, as they watched a car pull up in front of the officers. Detective Miller stepped out and Officer Connors approached to take him behind the yellow tape and towards the building.

“Do you think Dax is already inside?” Jasper asked, since they didn’t recognise the remaining officer.

“Maybe. Can you take us round the other side? So we could see the building more closely?”

“Hmmm. I’m not sure.” Jasper zipped away and returned a second later. “The buildings are too close together. I can get us behind there without that cop noticing but, we’d be right outside the window. We’d be spotted easily if we slip up.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure that we don’t,” Clarke stated.

Jasper made that face that he always did when he wanted to disagree with Clarke, but was going to defer to her decision anyway. “Hold on,” he said, and Clarke grabbed onto him tightly for the extremely short trip before they landed in a narrow alley, between two apartment buildings, only one of which was still in use.

Jasper jerked his head sharply to their left and Clarke lead the way, stealthily moving through the gap to stand sharply against the wall of the derelict building they were interested in. She slid against the wall until she got to the large window. The building had clearly been out of regular use for some time, since all the windows were devoid of glass, removing a potential sound barrier, but a quick glance inside confirmed that the building occupants were on the other side of the room. She slid down the side before popping her head up slightly, so that only her eyes peered over the window ledge if one looked closely, as Jasper copied her movements.

“That’s Dax, right?” Jasper whispered, locking eyes on the officer hovering over the dead body slumped against the wall in the other corner of the room. Although it was dark there were a few holes in the ceiling that light shone through, making it easier to see into the recesses of the room. “What’s he doing?” he wondered, as they watched the young officer patting down the victim’s shirt – an action he abruptly stopped when the door opened.

Clarke and Jasper ducked back down on instinct, but as they heard Miller and Connors’ voices travel further away from them they slowly raised their heads again. This time they saw Miller squatting next to the body, while Dax and Connors stood behind him. They were updating Miller on the case, and their statements sounded legitimate, but there was something about the scene that put Clarke on edge. As Miller stood up and started looking about the room Clarke tensed, though not from fear of being discovered; it was the way Dax was creeping closer to the body again, Connors’ eyes constantly flashing back and forth between Miller and his partner as if he was on look out that made her certain Monty’s suspicions were correct.

“Guys,” Raven’s voice came in over their earpieces, startling Clarke and Jasper, “I’m just at the bridge and I’ve spotted that kid Murphy, the one Bellamy represented after he was arrested for dealing. He’s with his old crew and I think something is about to go down here, I could use backup.”

Clarke and Jasper exchanged a quick nod before he disappeared. The slight gust of wind formed by his departure caused Miller to look in their direction for the first time so Clarke ducked again quickly, scooting under the ledge as she listened closely.

“Did you hear something?” Clarke assumed the question came from Miller as the voice sounded closer to her than the others.

“No,” someone replied quickly.

“It’s not been windy tonight, has it?” Clarke heard, growing anxious.

“No,” the same voice repeated, though it sounded less certain than a moment ago.

After a tense pause, Clarke’s heightened senses picked up the sound of Miller’s footsteps turning around and she was about to risk peering back over the ledge when Miller spoke up again, “Hey, what’s that?”

“What?” said a third voice.

“That, in your hand,” Miller stated, and though he had moved farther away from Clarke, his voice was louder with intent.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Hey-“

When Clarke heard the sounds of an altercation she couldn’t help but look up, her eyes growing wide when she saw Miller was engaged in a scuffle with the two officers. The three of them appeared to be grappling over whatever was currently tightly clasped in Dax’s hand.

“What are you doing?” Miller exclaimed as he tried to fight off the two men, managing to shove Connors off of him. “That’s evidence!”

Raven suddenly chimed in over the earpiece, but Clarke hardly registered what she was asking Monty to look up because at the same time Connors got hold of his baton and seemed about to hit Miller on the head with it.

Acting on instinct, Clarke pressed the button to turn off her receiver and leapt into the room. She had the element of surprise on her side and she used it, throwing her silver baton out with a practiced skill after her sudden entrance caught all three men off guard. She hit Connors cleanly in the chest and he fell with a heavy thud, hitting his head against the floor and knocking him unconscious. Clarke grabbed her baton quickly, but her stomach sank, as she saw Dax was now stood behind Miller with one arm around the detective’s neck, the other holding his gun though he couldn’t seem to decide which of them to point it at.

Clarke held her hands up in a gesture she intended to seem appeasing, but he recoiled at the sight of her raised baton.

“Hands up!” he stated, cocking the gun now fully aimed at Miller.

Clarke obeyed, holding the baton between her left thumb and index finger, keeping her palms facing outward. “Don’t do this,” she said, trying to sound calm and understanding, even if she still had no idea what the hell was going on.

“Look, I didn’t want this,” he said, the hand pointing the gun at Miller shaking slightly even as his other arm coiled tighter around Miller’s neck.

“Then don’t fucking do it,” Miller grunted, seemingly torn between wanting to strain further against the headlock and not wanting to aggravate his attacker too far.

“We can’t have any witnesses,” Dax said, eyes snapping between Clarke and Miller. “I said hands up!” he yelled at her, as she started to relax them, and she quickly complied.

“We don’t have to tell anyone about this,” Clarke said, searching for the right words as her eyes scanned their surroundings looking for something she could use to her advantage.

“Like fuck we don’t,” Miller growled. Clarke’s immediate instinct was to try to let him know that was a bad idea, though Dax did that for her when he tightened his grip around Miller’s neck further, causing the shorter man to choke.

“Stop!” Clarke called out as Miller’s face grew pale, her arms moving towards them on instinct.

“I said keep your hands up!” he repeated, pointing the gun firmly at her this time, though his grip loosened a little at the movement and Miller appeared able to draw breath. “Drop your weapon.”

“Okay!” Clarke said, holding steady, mind racing as she tried to think of a way to buy them some time. “Okay, just take a breath. Let’s just discuss this.”

“Drop it!”

“Okay! Dropping it, see?” Clarke nodded and started to sink to the ground, gently dropping her outstretched arms at the same time. Dax’s attention stayed on her as she moved slowly downwards, but Clarke kept her eyes fixed on Miller, waiting, hoping he’d recover his breath in enough time. She only had the vaguest outline of a plan, but she wasn’t sure if she could stop Dax without injuring Miller unless he was able to move himself out of the way. She was running out of time.

Just before she was too close to the ground to stall any longer, she managed to catch Miller’s eye. “Duck!”

“What?” Dax began to yell, but with an expert flick of the wrist Clarke threw the baton to hit Dax in his right knee that stood out to the side of Miller. As he jerked in pain his arm came loose from around Miller’s neck and the detective threw himself out of the way, so that he lay on the floor in front of the still unconscious Connors. Dax dropped his gun, but managed to lean onto a beam and recover his balance, as Clarke picked her baton up and threw it again, intending to get a more solid hit. This time however, Dax was better prepared and jumped out the way in time. Instead, Clarke’s weapon clanged loudly against the beam behind him, the force of her throw creating a large dent in the decaying wood.

Before Clarke could think about retrieving her weapon she had to get Dax away from his. She ran forward at the same time Dax lunged towards it, but it was Miller who beat them both to it, curling a shaking hand around the gun.

“Don’t move, Dax,” Miller warned. He sounded confident as he cocked the gun towards the officer and had managed to turn himself around to face them, but the way he remained mostly lying on the floor with just his elbows propped up made Clarke worry just how in control he was of the weapon.

Dax clearly had the same thought as, even though he stayed still, he laughed at the detective. “What are you going to do from down there Miller?”

Miller didn’t bother to respond as Clarke used the distraction to her advantage, landing a solid blow to Dax’s side. Clarke intended to follow it up with a few more quick punches, but Dax was a lot stronger than she gave him credit for, grabbing hold of her arm and twisting it sharply behind her back, turning her body around. Clarke kicked at him and used her other arm to punch his side, her force only managing to loosen rather than remove his grip. It was enough for Clarke, however, as she used her strength to pull her arm out of his grasp, although in doing so she experienced the awful sensation of feeling her bone crack.

Her powers meant the pain lasted barely a few seconds, but it was enough for Dax to gain the upper hand. Suddenly Clarke was flat on the floor, her face landing squarely onto Miller’s back. She tried to scramble to her feet, but had only just flipped herself over to sit up beside Miller when she heard the click.

Dax had the gun.

“You should have just left it alone,” Dax growled, training the cocked gun on them, eyes darting hastily above their heads towards the door before looking back down. “This didn’t need to happen.”

“It still doesn’t,” Clarke said, glancing around to find a way out. To call her team for help she had to press the button on the side of her mask, which she couldn’t do without drawing Dax’s attention. Clarke thought she could still take him down on her own, angle herself so that if she got hit it wouldn’t be instantly fatal, but she couldn’t be sure Miller wouldn’t get hurt at the same time unless they managed to distract Dax.

As if he had followed her train of thought, Miller glared up at their attacker. “You won’t get away with this.”

Dax paused then, and he suddenly looked, of all things, amused. “You really have no idea do you, Miller?”

“No idea about what?” Miller growled.

Clarke didn’t give him a chance to find out.

She pressed the button on her belt that called her baton back, then swiftly flung it at Dax, making contact with his side. He fired a shot as he flew backwards but Clarke leaned over Miller in time for the bullet to graze her side.

She was about to sit back up and verify Miller was unharmed when Clarke heard the loud crack of Dax’s head hitting the wooden beam. Her blood ran cold as Clarke whipped her head around to see his lifeless body slump to the ground.

“Oh shit,” Miller breathed and Clarke gulped as she realised what she’d just done. “You have to go,” he started before his words were drowned by the loud creak of the rotting wood Dax had fell against splintering into bits.

Clarke and Miller both looked up in time to see the cracks in the ceiling start opening up before it started to cave in.

 

 

* * *

 

The sound of sirens howled through the wind running through Clarke’s hair. Still in costume, she’d only taken off the hood and removed the gloves, before taking out the braid from her hair; the slow, methodical movement giving her something to concentrate on instead of the shaking of her hands.

The rooftop wasn’t the safest place to take off her eye mask, but the fabric felt constricting now so she peeled that off as well, managing not to flinch when she saw a fleck of blood shining against the black of the mask as she set it down on the flat concrete beside her.

The others had debriefed her when they were all back at the base; how it turned out the fight that went down between two of Murphy’s crew was because they were dating the same person and not anything to do with their drug trade; how the sensors on the new suit had alerted Monty to Clarke’s short-lived injuries and worried him enough to send Jasper to check on her. In turn, she told them what had happened to her, but she found her throat start to close off as she approached the end of her story, how she struggled to carry an injured Miller to safety amidst the falling rubble, particularly when a piece a struck him and rendered him unconscious, until Jasper turned up in time to whisk them both to safety in the next room. They’d had to leave Miller there when they heard someone approaching, unsure of his condition, so Clarke had felt slightly relieved when Monty told her the detective was on his way to hospital with serious, but not life-threatening injuries. The relief didn’t last long though, as her mind clouded over with memories of what had occurred and slipped away quietly when her friend’s assumed she was going to change.

It was at least an hour after Clarke had been sat alone when she heard the footsteps approaching. She wasn’t surprised that they took care to approach slowly, quietly, but she didn’t expect them to simply stand silently behind her.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Do you want me to?” Raven asked.

After a pause, “That’s never stopped you before.”

Raven sighed, then moved forward so she sat cross-legged near to, but not quite touching, Clarke, clearly trying to gauge her mood. “Clarke…you did everything you could.”

“You weren’t there,” Clarke shot back.

“You’re right, I wasn’t. So what am I missing? Cause it sounded to me like you saved Miller’s life.”

“I put him in danger in the first place.”

“You said Connors and Dax attacking him; you intervened.”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?” Raven prompted.

“The ceiling wouldn’t have caved if not for me. Dax wouldn’t have died – “

“You were just fighting him off; he was trying to kill you too,” Raven reminded. “You didn’t know Dax would die.”

When Clarke spoke her words were so soft Raven strained to hear her. “I knew Connors would.”

“What?”

“I…” Clarke sighed before she revealed the part of her story she’d left out. “Before Jasper got there Connors woke up. I was trying to lift Miller when I heard him…I’d forgotten he was even there. He regained consciousness just in time to see the thing that killed him.”

Raven grimaced. “God, that’s awful. But that’s not on you.”

“I could have helped him. I could have moved him out of the way, but…I couldn’t figure out how to save them both in time. I had to choose Connors or Miller.”

“And you think it was wrong to choose Miller?” Raven asked gently.

“I think it was wrong to choose at all.”

“Better than letting them both die.”

“That doesn’t make it okay that I just let Connors die. Or Dax.”

Raven shook her head. “Say that it doesn’t. What else could you have done?”

Clarke breathed out harshly. “I don’t know. Maybe there wasn’t a way to get everyone out of there alive. I just…I need time.”

“I get that. But you don’t have to spend that time alone,” Raven said before gently sliding her hand along the concrete so that the sides of their hands touched. She bumped her pinkie against Clarke’s with a quirk of her lips, clearly hoping to get a smile out of her friend and Clarke felt the tears that had been building get a little closer to falling. She couldn’t quite manage a smile but she did move her hand so she could clasp Raven’s hand firmly with her own. If she forgot to rein in her strength, Raven never mentioned it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So following on from the more serious outcome of the last chapter, this one is a bit lighter and should also make up for the lack of Bellamy in the previous one. (Also, in relation to a comment that is made near at the end of the chapter, I looked it up to make sure but I am not a lawyer so someone tell me if that's actually wrong.)  
> As always, thanks to the readers and please tell me what you think! :)

The front page headline yelled up at Bellamy from where the newspaper sat on the kitchen table, spelling out the question that had been weighing on his mind in large angry black letters. It wasn’t quite how he’d have phrased it since the reporter - Collins, a quick glance at the byline confirmed – had gone for something a bit overdramatic (at least Wells Jaha avoided being too sensational), but he couldn’t say the concern over the supposed “disappearance” of the Ark Avengers was completely unfounded.

Bellamy wanted to think it was an overreaction. Two weeks wasn’t a long time, and there had been other quiet spells since they burst onto the scene. However, this was the longest time since their arrival for there to be no sightings. More importantly for Bellamy, in the past he had still gotten personal visits so he had never wondered whether they had “given up” on the city, as Collins suggested. Although Bellamy didn’t want to think that that was the case, when he tried to think of other explanations for their absence he flashed back to the night she’d turned up at his apartment seriously injured…

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Bellamy asked, glancing up to look at his sister, currently on the other side of her kitchen, preparing their lunch.

“Glaring at the paper. You’ve not even opened it,” Octavia pointed out. “Why did you buy it if you were going to stare angrily at it instead of reading it?”

Bellamy sighed, not really having an answer as Octavia turned back to her chopping board. He’d bought it on a whim when he’d seen the headline on his way to Octavia’s apartment, but he no longer felt interested in feeding his fears. He flipped the paper over so that the other half of the front page now faced up and sandwiched amongst the world news headlines and sports scores, were two stories about the other major news in Ark. The first related to Abby Griffin’s return in the wake of the continuing scandal at Griffin Industries, not that Bellamy could even remember the details. He rolled his eyes at the picture of the CEO leaving the airport that took up far more space than necessary before turning his attention to the other article, but what he read left a bitter taste in his mouth. Diana Sydney was once again criticising Mayor Jaha for focusing his investments in Ark Central, this time claiming that his neglect had led to the building collapse that had killed Officers Connors and Richards and injured Miller. Bellamy knew that Walden, and its neighboring areas fared disproportionately to Central and Phoenix in funding and investment, but it angered him that the deaths of two men, not to mention his best friend’s injury, had merely turned into fodder for Sydney and Kane’s political campaigns. Plus, he couldn’t help the nagging feeling that something was a little off about the whole situation.

Bellamy had only met both officers a few times in passing, and when asked all Miller had said was he hadn’t been close to either of them. But there’d seemed something strange, almost guarded, about the way Miller had responded. Bellamy had decided to cut him some slack at the time since he had been in a hospital bed with a lot of painkillers in his system, but now he wondered if there was more to it. He started going over the facts in his mind, comparing the official story with the bit of information he had gleaned from Miller when they’d been alone, but before he could try to come to any conclusions his thoughts were interrupted.

“So, I might dye my hair green, oh, and Lincoln and I are getting married – I think I might like a winter wedding.”

“Wha- O, what the fuck?”

She chuckled and then popped a square of cheese into her mouth before answering. “I knew you weren’t paying attention to me. You should have seen the look on your face, Bell.” Just as he was starting to calm down she continued, “I thought you were starting to like Lincoln.”

That was true, but Bellamy considered it irrelevant in light of, “I thought you broke up last week.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t a break up, just a bad fight. You would understand the difference if you had a real relationship.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bellamy responded, automatically on the defensive even though part of him knew his sister had a point.

Octavia took a sip of her soda and looked thoughtful. “Can you even remember the last time you dated anyone long-term? The closest thing you have to a relationship is an obsession with someone whose real name you don’t even know. Talk about messed up.”

“I’m not obsessed,” he argued, but his voice was just a little too high to convince his sister.

“Oh my god!” Octavia exclaimed, the half chewed cheese falling out of her mouth and back onto the counter.

“Gross. Octavia, I’m pretty sure I taught you how to eat like a normal person.” She ignored his comment and reached over the table to whack the side of his head. “Ow! What was that for?”

“You like the Ark Angel!” she hissed.

Bellamy rolled his eyes at the nickname. “So do you!”

“No, I mean you _like her_ like her!”

“Okay, you’re not 12, Octavia –“

“No, and neither are you,” she stated, putting her hands on her hips. “What the hell are you thinking?”

“I’m not thinking anything –“

She interrupted him again with a clipped, “You got that right.”

“And I’m not obsessed with her,” he finished through gritted teeth. “I just think she’s good for this city.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a few steps behind developing a crush on her.”

“Where are you getting that from?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders, but she gave him a cold look.

“I’m your sister, I know you. You have a crush. Which is ridiculous by the way, and – where have they even been these last few weeks, do you know?”

Ignoring her question, Bellamy went back to one of his favourite things; arguing. “I don’t have a crush, I’m not a child.”

Octavia rolled her eyes, but didn’t comment on his deflection, instead commenting offhand, “So what then, you’re actually in love with her?”

“You’re really overthinking this, O.”

“Actually, Bellamy, I think, for once, you’re _under_ thinking this. How would you be able date this woman? I mean, for starters nobody really knows what her superpower is. She could be a danger to you, and there could be any number of weird side effects. And if not, there are still a lot of dangerous people after her - way more dangerous than Lincoln's former crowd,” she added before he could interrupt. “And what kind of girlfriend could she be anyway? How would you have time to date when she was running off to fight bad guys! But you don’t even know, what if she's already married? And what about the kids?”

“Kids?! Octavia, Jesus!”

“It would probably be a pretty difficult pregnancy, what with all the violent crime – and she might pass some weird genes onto your kids –“

“O, slow down!” Bellamy tried to interrupt, but his sister was far from done.

“Well you are getting on, if you do want kids eventually you should start thinking about it at least, you don’t want to be one of those really old –“

“Octavia, just stop, okay?” She looked like she wanted to argue, but then pursed her lips shut, for which Bellamy silently gave thanks. “Firstly, I'm not that old.” Octavia raised an eyebrow, but he continued, “And secondly, what do I need kids for when I already have you.” She stuck her tongue out at that which he thought just proved his point.

“But don’t you think –“

“Can we just talk about something else?”

Octavia seemed to consider him for a moment, but then showed her agreement with a nod of her head. “Okay.”

He knew better than to think this conversation was over, but he was grateful she wasn’t going to press him right until a later date. “Thanks.”

She popped the half-eaten bit of cheese back into her mouth before passing Bellamy his sandwich and settling down with hers. “There is something I wanted to ask you, actually.”

Bellamy stopped mid-bite. “This whole distracting me with one thing, before you tell me about what you actually want to talk about is getting tiresome.”

Octavia rolled her eyes back at him, as she took a swig of her soda. “I didn’t lure you to my apartment for it, God, I just remembered, because I noticed that,” she said.

Bellamy followed where her finger was pointing to on the newspaper. “The scandal at Griffin Industries? What would I know about that?”

She pressed her index finger down towards the end of the article, trying to draw his attention. “Not the supplies thing, the fundraiser. The one GI are hosting for Kane next month. It’s still on despite the whole scandal, right?”

“Yeah, I guess they’re trying to show it’s not a big deal,” Bellamy shrugged. “What about it?”

“Aren’t you invited? Because of work?”

“We can get tickets, but you have to ask.”

“And if you asked would they give you two?” Octavia asked.

“If I paid for both, sure,” Bellamy said, surveying his sister suspiciously. “But why would you want to go to a fundraiser for Marcus Kane? Aren’t you voting for Sydney?”

Octavia glared at him as if he was an idiot. “Of course I’m voting for her. But the people at the fundraiser don’t need to know that. I mean, surely your colleagues wouldn’t give the tickets to you if they thought you weren’t voting for Kane either?”

Bellamy hadn’t quite decided who he was voting for, to be honest, but Octavia wouldn’t want to hear that. It’s not like he particularly wanted to vote for Kane, but he wasn’t as sold as his sister was on Sydney either. “But why do you even want to go? You hate those high society types.”

“Sure,” Octavia said with a smile, “but unlike you, big brother I am still pretty good at schmoozing with them. Something about my natural charm just makes people love me.”

Bellamy snorted. “And why do you care if those people like you?”

“Love me,” she corrected. “There’s going to be some pretty big names in scientific research there, I figure it’s a good opportunity to network.”

Honestly, Bellamy would have been far less surprised if her reasons had been anarchic rather than practical, but he was glad that wasn’t the case. “I thought you already had an internship lined up?”

“Yeah, but the project is kind of boring. I figure it’s worth a shot; places like GI get so many applications, helps if they can put a face to the name. Especially when the face looks this good,” Octavia added, waving her hand in the air to demonstrate, with a smirk.

Bellamy rolled his eyes. “If you want an internship at GI why don’t you just ask Clarke? You’re still friends, right? Can’t she just call up her mom and get you in the company?”

“It doesn’t have to be at GI, some of their competitors will be there too. And besides, I don’t want to be handed the position Bellamy. I’d like to think I’d worked for it, not that I got it from favours.”

“But you are asking me for a favour,” he pointed out.

“You’re my brother. Plus, you’re just getting me in the door, whether they actually take me on will be up to me.”

Bellamy sighed, but knew he was going to accept anyway. “Guess I better send my good suit to get dry cleaned.”

Octavia grinned.

 

Bellamy spent the rest of the afternoon at his sister’s apartment, until she kicked him out because she needed to study. Deciding to do some work of his own when he returned home, his case files distracted him for so long it was well past his usual dinner time when he got up to cook.

As he was perusing the contents of his fridge, Bellamy suddenly heard a noise coming from the direction of his corridor. It was faint, as if it was coming from outside, and a few months ago he wouldn’t have questioned it. He was well acquainted with the myriad of sounds that could filter through the walls of a busy apartment building; but a lot had happened in a few months that made him wonder if there was something else. He closed the fridge door and listened carefully, not hearing anything else. He moved so he could see directly down the corridor, and it was empty but a nagging feeling remained in Bellamy’s mind. He walked down the passageway and the closer he got to the open window, he kept expecting to see something, someone. But a few short steps later, all that greeted him was an empty landing, the cool breeze blowing in and the sound of cars outside.

Bellamy breathed out harshly, shaking his head at himself. Surely it was a good thing _she_ hadn’t turned up bleeding out on his step again, but it was hard to deny the disappointment he felt that she hadn’t been there, that she hadn’t sought him out and he couldn’t contact her. It wasn’t even about anything Octavia had said – really – but he wished he had a way of confirming things were alright, that her (their, he corrected) absence wasn’t the result of a serious injury (or worse).

He reached up to pull the window down, wanting to inflict his sudden annoyance at himself on something, but then he heard the noise again. Now he could hear it more clearly, it sounded like the next door window being opened, but that couldn’t be right since he knew the Millers weren’t home. – _Shit!_ Bellamy inhaled sharply at the realization the noise he’d heard must have been made by a burglar.

Bellamy quickly pushed his window all the way up so he could leap out onto the landing and – well, he wasn’t really sure what he’d do next. But he could do something; he wasn’t going to sit around and let the Millers get robbed!

Whatever plan he might have been trying to form vanished when he saw the blonde-haired intruder slip gracefully out the window, stepping back with a gasp when she saw him.

“Bellamy! What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” he said, trying to keep his tone even. He may have been hoping to see her mere moments before, but this wasn’t the circumstance he’d imagined. “What were you doing in there? Did you take anything?” he suddenly wondered, anger rising.

“No, of course not!” she replied harshly, folding her arms. The street lamp wasn’t close enough to provide much illumination but her hood had fallen down and above her eye mask he could see the way her forehead was furrowed in irritation.

 _Good._ He was annoyed too. “So why were you in there?”

“I was trying to check on Detective Miller. This is his parent’s place isn’t it?” At Bellamy’s nod, she continued, “I thought was staying here after they released him from hospital.”

“He had been, but he went back to his apartment today.” Bellamy had helped move Miller’s stuff that morning before he went to Octavia’s, but he suspected Miller’s parents hadn’t left yet. They’d been unwilling to leave Miller’s side since the accident, something that had left the young man as grateful as he was frustrated by the constant hovering. The move back to his place had been their compromise.

She nodded. “My mistake.”

“You know, that doesn’t explain why you went inside,” Bellamy pointed out.

“I wanted to check it was secure,” she said carefully.

“Why? Secure from what? What happened to Miller was an accident,” Bellamy started until he saw her face blanch at his words. “Wasn’t it?”

“It’s probably better you don’t know,” she said quietly.

Bellamy clenched his fists in frustration. “Miller is my best friend, if he’s in danger you’re damn well going to tell me about it.”

She looked angrily at him for a moment, but he glared back until she finally sighed. “I don’t know for sure. It depends how much he remembers.”

“So the building wasn’t an accident? Someone made it collapse?” Bellamy wondered, but she looked away, face unreadable.

“No, it wasn’t…” She sounded tired when she started again, “The collapse wasn’t a set up, but the case that sent Miller there was.”

That made even less sense. “Why did they want Miller there?”

“They didn’t. That’s why he might be in danger. But only if they think he remembers what happened that night.”

“He remembered about you,” Bellamy told her. When he realised it made her seem distressed he added, “He said that you don’t need to worry about them looking into you for that.”

She cocked her head to one side at that and analysed him. “When you say he told you do you mean he left a message for me? As in he knows – “

“No, no, I didn’t mention you to him.” He was about to say he hadn’t told anyone, but soon remembered that wasn’t true. “He just mentioned it when we were alone, I didn’t even know you were there until he said so. But in his statement he said that it was just him, Dax and Connors in the room. So, officially, you and your partner weren’t involved.”

She was silent for a while, as if she didn’t know what to say. “He didn’t need to do that.”

“You saved his life. He was grateful.”

“He didn’t have to perjure himself to say thank you.”

“Actually it’s only perjury if he was under oath; this would be giving a false statement,” Bellamy began before he realised what he was doing. “Sorry,” he said with a shrug.

She paused and then laughed aloud, her demeanour suddenly much lighter than it had been only moments before. “No, I guess I should know better than to say things like that to a lawyer.”

He nodded, allowing himself a small smile. “Yeah, you should.”

“So, how is Miller doing?” she asked after a beat. “He looked pretty bad when I last saw him.”

“He’s still a bit bruised. The leg’s not as bad as they thought, just a sprain, though his arm has to be in a sling for a while. So, he’ll be stuck on desk duty at first once he can go back to work, but they think he’ll make a full recovery. Could have been a lot worse. Would have been too, if you hadn’t been there.” She turned away at that. “Hey…is everything alright?” he asked.

She looked back over at him, curiously. “Yes. Why?”

“It’s just…the last 2 weeks,” Bellamy said with a wave of his hand, not sure how to ask his question without sounding whiny.

She pursed her lips, unimpressed. “We haven’t _‘disappeared’_ if that’s what you’re wondering. Not everything makes the news, and some things – “

“It’s not that, I just, it was the longest period where no one saw you…it was the longest I didn’t see you.” When he looked back at her she was staring at him intently, and he was suddenly struck by how close they were standing. It made him feel strangely nervous. “Uh,” he cleared his throat, “after Miller said you’d been there, I was worried that you’d been injured too.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Bellamy,” she said gently, something that resembled a smile on her lips. “You’ve seen my healing powers.”

“Yeah, but that’s not,” he started, before sighing and shrugging his shoulders. “That’s not a guarantee, is it? You’re not unbreakable.”

She stared back at him, silently before shaking her head. The movement drew his attention to her signature braid, and the long strands of hair spilling out of it by the side of her face. Without thinking about the action, he raised his right hand to touch the loose strands and tuck them behind her ear. The move was instinctual; he’d done it before he’d even realized that that was what he was going to do. Her eyes stayed locked on his as his thumb rubbed the outer shell of her ear and for a moment Bellamy couldn’t think of any of the reasons (and his sister had given him plenty) that this was a bad idea. He could only stare at her dark eyes and lips as his hand moved to cup her jaw, his thumb tracing up over her cheekbone and the bottom of the mask before –

She pulled back sharply, bringing her hand up to the spot where his had been as if he’d burned her. “What are you doing?” she glared.

Bellamy stared, shocked. “I – uh,”

“It’d be one thing to just ask me about my identity,” she said, stepping back further, “but to try take off my mask – “

“I wasn’t,” Bellamy cut in. “I swear, I-“

They were both interrupted by a meow as Natalie jumped up onto the Miller’s still open window ledge. Years of dealing with her antics caused Bellamy to quickly reach forward and grab the cat before she could run off, but he knew even before he heard the movement that his guest had used the distraction to make her exit.

Bellamy sighed as he gently deposited Natalie back into her apartment and closed the Miller’s window down, noting to himself that among the many stupid thoughts he’d just had running through his mind, he genuinely hadn't even considered removing the mask.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to update! I never meant for it to take quite this much time between chapters, but I come bearing a longer chapter to try to make up for it. I’ve been sorting through my plans for the remainder of this fic and though I can't promise regular updates just yet I think the intervals will be _much_ shorter until it’s finished.  
>  Many thanks to my new beta [megaphonemonday](http://megaphonemonday.tumblr.com/) for all her help. And a big thank you to everyone who’s reading this story and left kudos & comments – especially to the people who left feedback during my impromptu hiatus, knowing people were still interested in the fic was a good motivator in getting back to it. :) I hope you enjoy the update, let me know what you think!

“I have a terrible idea.”

“Monty, you need to work on your pitch,” Raven remarked from her perch on the table opposite him.

Monty was sat facing away from his monitors and Jasper stood on his left, resting his right hip against the table as he kept one eye on the screens. “I’d say it’s only moderately bad,” his friend defended.

Clarke folded her arms and surveyed Monty curiously from her position on his other side. “What is it?”

“Well, I had an email this morning with new IT job vacancies,” he began.

“Don’t tell me you’re feeling short on work,” Raven said with a raise of her eyebrows. It was a fair comment considering how much time they’d all been putting in to keep on top of their regular jobs while still fighting crime on the side.

“It’s an alert I set up back before I decided to become my own boss. Afterwards, I thought I’d keep the notifications on in case there were any good short-term contracts,” Monty explained. “And today I discovered there is currently a vacancy for an IT Consultant for the Ark Police force.”

“Monty, no,” Clarke said, immediately realising what he was about to suggest.

“I said it was a terrible idea,” he tried to appease her, “but just hear me out. What we need is information. The job requires you to work between different stations, one of which was where Dax and Connors worked. That means I’d have access to all their old records.”

“You already hacked into their servers,” Raven pointed out.

“But if I could access the system directly, I might be able to figure out how people are covering their tracks. _And_ part of the role is working with the staff who are scanning in old paper records that aren’t on the system yet; there could be something in those files that’ll help us.”

“Look, we talked about it before you guys got here,” Jasper piped up, “and I know it could be dangerous, but if Monty was in trouble he could signal me and I could get him out of there.”

“Which would only confirm that he knows us.”

“If it came to that then they’d already know I was involved. I know it’s not ideal,” Monty stated, “but right now, what else do we have?”

The four of them looked around at each other and Clarke sighed heavily as Monty’s words sunk in. They had all been working tirelessly to find out what was going on in their city: what had happened to those missing hospital supplies, what Dax and Connors had strived so hard to hide from Detective Miller that they almost killed him, where all the shipments of the mysterious new street drug were going. So far, they had very little to show for their hard work, but they were reluctant to establish any new sources, not knowing who they could trust and not wanting to make anyone into a target like Miller had been.

Clarke rubbed her hand over her face in frustration, pushing her hair back. “How many hours would they expect you to be there?”

Monty swivelled his chair around to check the ad, but Raven spoke up first. “Clarke, you’re not serious?”

She threw her hands up, annoyed. “What other leads do we have? The only thing we could find on Dax and Connors was that they had both been in juvie but nothing linking them to anything since, you couldn’t get anything out of Wick about the police trackers before he went off the grid, and we _still_ can’t figure out how people are getting their hands on so much jobi, but—“

“I think it’s pronounced _jo_ bi,” Jasper corrected.

“Whatever it’s called,” Clarke glared, prompting Jasper to take a small step back, “it’s making people act crazy! All these stupid, petty crimes while they’re under—“

“Guys, look at this,” Monty interrupted, clicking a few times to maximise some of the video streams on the screens, but all that displayed was static.

“What are we meant to be looking at?” Raven asked, as the black and white lines glared back at all of them.

“These are the feeds from the courthouse cameras,” Monty explained, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “I tapped into all of their CCTV this morning.”

“And now you’ve lost the connection?” Clarke wondered.

Monty shook his head. “No, my connection is fine. The cameras are still functioning, but this is all they’re playing.”

“Well, what were they playing earlier?” Raven said.

“Just feed from the outside of the building and some of the public areas inside. There’s a lot of places where cameras aren’t allowed, including inside the courtrooms.”

“And Shumway is supposed to be there right now,” Jasper noted.

Clarke sucked in a sharp breath at his reminder. “Of course. Today’s the first day of his preliminary hearing.”

“Shit,” Jasper nodded, running a hand through his hair. “Wasn’t there something on the news about the extra security they were getting for it?”

Raven folded her arms over her chest, frowning. “There’s no way this is a coincidence.”

“Monty, do you think you can fix the issue from here?”

“I can try, but it seems like they’ve been re-routed to another feed, in which case the wires would need looking at.”

Clarke nodded. “Then Jasper and I will go over and check it out. Did we confirm that all his accounts were frozen? He can’t afford to pay for someone to break him out,” Clarke thought aloud as she ducked behind a screen to change outfits.

“On paper, he can’t,” Monty confirmed. “But we can’t rule out the possibility that there were accounts we didn’t find. Or that he has accomplices who stayed loyal and are willing to foot the bill.”

“Or worse,” Raven noted. “He could have enemies who want to get rid of him before he reveals their secrets in court. It’s still early, he’s probably not on the stand yet.”

“If that’s the case, then surely someone would have tried to get to him before he arrived at the courthouse. Like, when he was in transit or even at the prison,” Jasper thought. “It’s not like _that_ hasn’t happened recently.”

“Not for anyone so high-profile. He’s been watched pretty closely. Would have been harder for someone to get to. Or maybe they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves,” Monty mused.

“And abducting him from the courthouse won’t draw attention?”

“We don’t know what’s going on for sure,” Clarke interjected as she emerged from behind the screen in her costume. “Let’s try to get those cameras back on before jumping to conclusions. You ready?” she directed to Jasper who spun round the room as he changed outfits in the time it took Raven to pick up her jacket. “What are you doing?” Clarke asked.

“Coming with you,” Raven stated flatly.

“No, Raven, it’s the middle of the day.”

“Which is more dangerous for you guys with secret identities,” she replied pointedly.

Clarke shook her head, though the statement reminded Clarke to reach for the coloured contacts she sometimes wore as part of her disguise. It was one thing not to wear them when she patrolled at night, but they would be useful if anyone got too close. “You could be seen helping us and we can’t be worrying about you, too. We don’t even know what’s going on yet.” Raven looked like she wanted to argue, but ultimately relented. Jasper spared a quick glance for Raven, before speeding himself and Clarke out the building until they were a block away from the courthouse.

They crept up towards the building, trying to stay hidden since their outfits were more conspicuous in broad daylight. When they got to a spot with a view of the front entrance, they were surprised to see the standard camera crews and reporters outside simply milling about, tinkering with their equipment, clearly on standby but unaware of anything out of the ordinary. There were even a couple of security guards outside the main doors, neither of whom seemed to be acting like they knew anything was amiss.

“If something really bad happened, they’d have heard it, right?” Jasper whispered hopefully.

Clarke pursed her lips. “Not necessarily. Can you do a scan around the other sides of the building?”

Jasper nodded and raced off. He came in over their comms a few moments later. “Guys, there’s a broken second-floor window at the back here. And the door for the fire exit is gone.”

“Gone?” repeated Monty. “As in, the whole door’s been taken off?”

“More like blown off, I think.”

“Can you see what room the window leads into?” Clarke asked.

“Looks like a judge’s chambers, but it seems empty. The corridor behind the fire door’s empty, too. Oh, I think I’ve found where the CCTV’s been tampered with.”

“Can you fix it?”

After a quick back and forth between Monty and Jasper, the latter followed his friend’s instructions in almost no time thanks to his powers. “What do you see now?”

“Nothing.”

“Do I need to switch the wires round?” Jasper worried aloud.

“No, picture’s fine.”

“The rooms on the feed are empty,” Raven said grimly. “All of them.”

“What? Where did everyone go?” Jasper wondered.

Clarke bit her lip in thought as she listened to Monty and Raven’s discussions over her earpiece. Part of her knew that they shouldn’t go inside when they were still basically in the dark and could end up trapped in a sticky situation. But, putting Shumway behind bars was the first big thing that they’d accomplished with their superpowers, and Clarke couldn’t just sit by and let him escape. After all, she’d never been very good at sitting around and waiting for things to happen even before she had powers, so why start now?

Jasper suddenly appeared by Clarke’s side again. “Well? What do you think?”

“Do you think one of us could get to that window?”

Jasper grimaced a little, but simply answered, “It’s not that high, I can run up the wall.”

“Okay. You take us both round the back, I’ll take the fire exit, the window’s yours.”

“Are you sure splitting up is a good idea?” Raven cut in.

“Jasper won’t be far,” Clarke said, just before Jasper transported the pair of them to his previous spot behind the courthouse. “Be careful,” she whispered.

“You, too,” he nodded before racing up the wall and into the window.

Clarke stepped forward into the empty doorway, quickly tracing her fingers over the hinges where the door previously stood to confirm Jasper’s assessment. Definitely removed by force. The corridor beyond was dark, but she could see another door at the end of it, this one intact and closed. She darted forward, and very gently eased the door open. A quick glance inside confirmed what she had heard through the door—or rather, hadn’t heard, as the adjoining hallway was completely empty. An empty staircase leading up towards deeper darkness caught Clarke’s eye, but she passed it by to explore the ground floor.

She walked slowly, one hand on her baton, but there was nothing suspicious for a few minutes. As she continued, her super-powered hearing filtered voices through the heavy wooden door just a few feet away, though even she couldn’t make out anything other than low murmurs. She noticed this door had a glass panel at the top, so she halted before it to peer through from the side.

Almost as soon as she’d looked through it, she stepped back a few paces and pressed the button to whisper into her comms. “I’ve found some of the missing people. They’re being held hostage.”

“Fuck! How many?”

“Three armed men, twenty hostages at least. Possibly more of both, I can’t see the whole room. Can you call in a tip to the police?”

“But we don’t know who’ll answer it,” Raven pointed out.

“Detective Miller is back at work, on desk duty,” Clarke told them. “Can you call his work line directly?”

“On it,” Monty said.

“Find anything upstairs, Jasper?”

“Not yet. Let’s deal with these guys first.” Almost as soon as he’d finished speaking, Jasper appeared by Clarke’s side. “You got a plan?”

“I don’t think we can get a good look inside without them seeing us. So, let’s distract them to split them up.”

“You draw some of them outside, I’ll get in once the door’s open and take out the rest?” Jasper suggested.

It was a tactic they’d used successfully a lot in the past. Even though their opponents usually knew to expect them as a pair, Jasper’s speed was more disconcerting in person and Clarke’s strength combined with her martial arts skills was enough to take out the rest. They did sometimes have an assist from Raven, Clarke reminded herself, as her friend wasn’t one to be confined to the sidelines and often joined them on patrol. Still, thanks to their training, Clarke felt confident she and Jasper could handle the small group.

Clarke nodded and moved into position, picking up a nearby bench and throwing it to the ground hard enough to make a loud, ugly crack. As expected, the door opened and two men stepped out, guns at the ready. Jasper rushed past them and in their moment of surprise, Clarke threw her baton out, hitting the first in the chest solidly, his head falling back and hitting his accomplice on the chin. They managed to recover quickly enough to attempt retaliation, but Clarke had been practicing intensively since her fight with Dax and neither man got a real hit in. Soon, they were both unconscious on the floor and when she ran into the room, she found Jasper had already taken care of two more armed men and had tied them up. He whizzed past her to tie up the men she had just fought, leaving Clarke to survey the hostages who were staring wide-eyed at her, some still frozen in place while others stood shakily. Thankfully, none looked hurt.

“Is everyone alright?”

There was a general murmured consensus and two of the hostages raced up to her with warm thanks. Clarke accepted their gratitude as politely as she could before stepping away and letting Jasper direct everyone outside through the fire exit Clarke had used. She was about to leave the room herself to search the rest of the building when she caught sight one of the hostages.

She hadn’t given much thought to the tall, dark figure helping the elderly lady in the far corner stand up at first, but now that he had turned around, she could see Wells staring right at her.

Without giving in to the involuntary urge to pull her hood further down her face, Clarke spun on her heel, intending to follow through with her original plan when he called out to her, “Wait!”

She tensed, wondering if he recognised her, before trying to relax so as not to give herself away. Turning back to face him, Clarke took a small step away as he approached her in an attempt to maintain some distance. She knew the voice modulator was on, but Clarke couldn’t help schooling her voice further when she spoke. “Can I help you?”

“I think they’re trying to break Shumway out. Court had just gone into recess when they showed up, but it looked like some of them were going to the room where Shumway was supposed to be held. I didn’t see anything else before these guys brought us to wait in here.”

“How many more of them were there?”

“I saw another four.”

“Where was Shumway being held?”

“I’ll show you,” Wells said, stepping forward, but Clarke immediately held up a hand.

“You’re not coming with us.”

He stopped, but looked frustrated. “Ma’am,” he began, and Clarke had to fight the urge roll her eyes at his typical politeness, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I have just as much right to be here as you do. In fact, I technically have more,” he added, gesturing to the press pass fixed to his pocket.

“Be that as it may, _sir_ ,” Clarke responded, “we’re better equipped to handle whatever we find. And in going after the other men, we’ll have to leave these people unattended. You’ll be more helpful looking after them until the police get here.”

It was probably a little underhanded, knowing Wells wouldn’t be able to turn his back on innocent bystanders, but desperate times and all that. “Fine,” he stated firmly, hands on hips, and gave Clarke the information she needed.

Clarke looked over her shoulder to find Jasper standing just outside the room with one eye on Clarke and Wells. “You got that?” Jasper nodded and ran to check it out.

Before Clarke could move to follow, Wells asked, “What’s your plan here?”

She turned back around in surprise. “Excuse me?”

He sighed. “Look, I’m grateful you saved us, but what you just did could have put us in even more danger if something had gone wrong. You didn’t even know what the situation was.”

Clarke had to stop herself from gaping at him. “We had it under control.”

“You were lucky. Before you got here, they’d already hurt one person and taken him away because he annoyed them.”

“What do you mean, they took him away? Took him with Shumway?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was arguing with the men who locked us in here; taunting them. I think he was trying to help,” Wells admitted, “distract them so some us could get away, but they just took him instead. I don’t know where.”

“Friend of yours?”

“I only know him by reputation.” Wells slipped into what Clarke had previously termed his “reporter voice” as he started to give a clear, precise description of the man in question. However, the more he spoke, the more Clarke felt her stomach start to sink as she realised it sounded an awful lot like someone else she knew.

_Bellamy wasn’t supposed to be at the courthouse today_ , Clarke reminded herself, ignoring the fact that she only knew that because of data Monty had on Bellamy’s schedule, data that she shouldn’t have looked at in the first place.

Just then, Jasper’s voice broke through the comms. “Clarke, no sign of Shumway, but—you better come look at this.”

Clarke steadied herself, which was made difficult by Monty and Raven’s voices in her earpiece as they peppered Jasper with questions, but she managed to look Wells in the eye as she spoke. “We’ll look for him, all of them. I promise,” she stated, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “But you should go before someone finds us or they wake up.”

Wells didn’t look pleased by the instructions, but nodded. “Good luck,” he said, and left to follow the others out the fire exit.

Wells’ reprimand ringing in her ears, Clarke felt the urge to give the area a quick once-over, even though she had watched Jasper do a sweep of the room after tying the bad guys up and going through their pockets. Still, the strain in Jasper’s voice carried her out of the room to the spot Wells had described, though when she arrived it was curiously empty.

“Jasper, where are you?” Clarke asked into the comms as she stepped through the open door, taking in the sight of the empty room. Bare walls surrounded a generic, long table and two chairs. Clarke didn’t see anything in the bland décor to be excited about. That is, until her eyes landed on the top right-hand corner of a wall where the screen to a large vent was hanging loose.

“That’s been tampered with,” Clarke said aloud, examining it more closely.

“What has?” Raven demanded.

“The vent,” Jasper answered for her, sliding to a stop just behind Clarke.

“Do you think you can get in—“

“I just did,” he admitted with a grimace. “It was open like that when I got here, so I went in. I’ve been through all of them, Clarke, and I’ve searched the rest of the building, but he’s nowhere. The only way he could still be in the vents is if he had some kind of shrink ray on him!”

“And still nothing on the cameras?” Clarke asked Monty, but he was quick to answer in the negative.

“All the news channels have started talking to those hostages you freed,” Raven added, “but no one has anything concrete. Police still haven’t arrived yet.”

“And no other clues?” Clarke turned back to Jasper. “Just, nothing? What about everyone else who was here?”

“There are another two rooms full of hostages upstairs, but only two guards in each. And…” Jasper paused, eyeing Clarke carefully.

“And what?” Raven prompted.

“Bellamy’s here, too,” he said, glancing away, “tied up in another, smaller room away from the others. No guard on him, though. No one seems to be in imminent danger. The guards just seem to be waiting around.”

“Okay, you keep searching the perimeter for Shumway or anything that might tell us where he’s gone. Monty, can you tap into traffic cameras surrounding us?”

“On it.”

For her part, Clarke ran upstairs to release the other hostages. She took the remaining men out quickly. Since Shumway had already disappeared, Clarke suspected that these men were there to stall the police’s attention rather than achieve anything concrete. She couldn’t help but notice the sluggishness of their responses, how easy they were to dispatch. She didn’t stop for thanks this time, in both rooms telling the person closest to her their quickest escape route before searching the rest of the building until she finally found her real target.

She saw his shoulders tense at the sound of her footsteps, but Bellamy’s face relaxed as soon as he saw her, taking a long exhale. “Man, am I glad to see you.”

Clarke pursed her lips tightly to stop herself from responding in kind. She hadn’t seen him since the night on his fire escape that she’d been pointedly not thinking about, wondering if he really had been going for her mask as she’d feared in the moment or something else. Clarke tried not to dwell on the relief she felt at laying eyes on him. She gasped though, when she noticed the mark on his forehead.

In a few short strides, Clarke was in front of him, falling to her knees to move his hair out of the way and examine the wound, currently leaking blood onto his eyebrow and now her fingers. “What happened?”

He winced when she made contact with the cut and let out a slight hiss. “It’s not that bad.”

“You’re grinding your teeth.”

“It looks worse than it is.”

“Have you seen it?” Clarke demanded.

“I imagine it looks worse than it is,” Bellamy amended and Clarke let out a harsh breath at his stubbornness.

“What did you do?” she demanded, remembering Wells’ version of events.

Bellamy met her eyes at that, almost pouting. “Hey, I’m the one tied up here. Speaking of which,” he twisted to show her his hands, still bound behind his back, “do you mind?”

Clarke looked back down at her hands, which were still on his face, left hand cupping his cheek, almost the way one might hold a lover’s. She dropped her hands quickly and moved to free him.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Clarke focused on untying the knots instead of the thoughts racing through her head: her relief at finding him alive, that sinking fear when she saw the blood on his face, the initial rush she had felt that night at his apartment when his hand had grazed her face…

Bellamy glanced at her over his shoulder, one of his messy curls falling to tickle her cheek. “You okay?”

Clarke looked up sharply before dropping her gaze back to his hands. She scooted a little further back so his eyes weren’t quite so close before methodically continuing her task. “Fine. Why?”

“I just figured with your super strength you’d have broken through the rope already.”

Clarke fought the odd urge to laugh, before pulling on the last knot so the ropes fell down. She thought about making a joke, lightening the moment, but her brain wouldn’t comply. In the end, she simply said, “My powers are fine,” standing quickly.

“Thanks,” he said, rubbing his wrists carefully and Clarke had to look away at the sight of the tender skin before she did something silly like give in to the strange, sudden urge to touch them herself. Her healing powers weren’t transferrable, so that didn’t make any sense.

Trying to compose herself, Clarke remembered she was short on time before the police arrived and she wanted to make a clean getaway without Jasper’s help. “Did you see anything? Overhear anything?” she asked professionally.

Bellamy shook his head before standing himself. “Nothing useful. The other hostages, we need to –“

“They’re fine.”

“Are you sure? They’re not still – “

“They’re okay, Bellamy,” she insisted. “I promise.”

He let out a breath, clearly relieved, before his face suddenly hardened a little. “And Shumway?”

“No sign of him.”

Bellamy let out a humourless laugh. “That bastard.”

“You think he orchestrated this?”

Bellamy looked at her sharply. “You don’t?”  
  
“Just wondering. We don’t have a lot of information to go on at the moment. Seems to be a recurring theme,” Clarke couldn’t help noting, wryly.

“We’ll figure it out,” Bellamy replied assuredly.

Clarke didn’t feel the same confidence, but it was hard to argue with the way he looked at her just then. She was struggling to come up with the right response when Jasper’s voice came in on the comm link. “I think I’ve found something. It doesn’t look good.”

 

* * *

 

 

_“Stay tuned for more coverage of today’s top story. We’ll bring you all the details on how former top real estate mogul Terry Shumway mysteriously escaped from the city courthouse on the first day of his trial, only to be found dead hours later when—“_

Bellamy growled and turned off the television. They almost made it sound like Shumway had been the one who’d suffered injustice instead of all his former tenants who would never get to see the man put on trial for his crimes. _And did they even talk about what those crimes were?_ Bellamy wondered, thinking back to the hours of news he’d been watching since returning home. All the channels seemed so focused on the escape, the involvement of the Avengers, and how little anyone seemed to know about what happened. After that, they barely mentioned the reason Shumway had been at the courthouse in the first place; charges of fraud and corruption barely a footnote to the drama of the day.

After he’d been freed and his rescuer dashed off, Bellamy had headed outside where he’d been directed toward the medic. He didn’t think it necessary for what was surely only a scratch, but he waited without complaint for his turn until they cleaned his wound. He’d just been given the all clear when reports started to come in that Shumway’s body had been found.

Bellamy knew that the kind, generous thing to do was forgive the dead, but he supposed he just wasn’t a good enough person for that.

“How about you give me that?” Octavia said, yanking the remote out of Bellamy’s hand while he was lost in thought, a move she’d perfected many years ago.

“You want to keep watching?” Bellamy asked, as she turned the TV back on.

She wrinkled her nose. “We’ve seen enough of that for one night. I’m trying to find something to watch until dinner is ready.”

“Is that a hint for me to start cooking?”

Octavia shoved her brother playfully at the remark, while continuing to change the channels. “Don’t be ridiculous, after the day you’ve had—“

“I can cook, O. I already told you not to make a fuss.”

“I’m not making a fuss,” Octavia countered. “It’s just dinner, and it’s not like I’m cooking. That Chinese restaurant near my place does delivery now, I ordered for us while you were in bathroom.”

“So I don’t get to put in my order?”  
  
“You’re so predictable, you think I don’t know your order by now?”

Bellamy laughed, shaking his head a little. “Okay.”

Octavia paused her fiddling with the remote and looked over at him properly. “Wow, you must be feeling bad if you’re not going to argue with me about that. Maybe you should stay home tomorrow.”

He waved off his sister’s comment. As much as perverse curiosity had tempted him to go to Shumway’s hearing, he’d only been at the courthouse for work and he knew he’d have a lot to catch up on. “It’s fine, Octavia, I’m just tired. And they already gave me the rest of today off—“

“Damn right they did, you could have died.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I already told you, the whole thing seemed like some sort of scheme to—“

“You could have _died_ ,” Octavia repeated fiercely and the hint of fear mixed into the glare in her eyes caused Bellamy to relent, and he reached out to squeeze her hand.

“I’m fine, O. We’re fine.”

She nodded sharply and squeezed his hand back for a moment, before quickly placing her hand back in her lap. “So,” she said, voice forcibly pleasant, “because I’m nice, you can pick anything you want to watch. Well,” Octavia added, her tone now resembling her usual self, “within reason. I will veto anything too boring.”

After making his selection, Bellamy tried to distract himself with the comedy, which they continued to watch after dinner had arrived, but his mind kept straying to the day’s events. None of it really added up. It seemed too risky, contending with the entirety of the courthouse, not to mention those outside. Why wait until the trial began to break Shumway out, and then turn around and kill him? Unless his death was an accident, perhaps the result of a disagreement after the fact? The other possibility was Shumway’s lackeys trying to break him out the same day his enemies tried to get to him, but if so the timing was far too curious to be a coincidence.

His mind raced with theories, ones he didn’t want to force onto his sister who was trying to cheer him up after a tough day. Still, he wanted to discuss them with someone, someone who would be interested in the answers, too. A name came instantly to mind—not really, Bellamy thought wryly to himself, as the only name he had for her was Princess. And if he was being honest, discussing Shumway wasn’t the only reason he wanted to see her.

Recently, he had been thinking a lot about the last time he’d seen her; when he’d been foolish enough to think about kissing the masked vigilante before she’d run away. A detail he’d carefully neglected to mention to his sister even though he had admitted the Princess had freed him this afternoon. Bellamy had been running over an apology in his head that he’d planned to deliver when they next saw each other, hoping that she wasn’t flat out avoiding him even as the days ticked by and she didn’t make an appearance. However, in the rush of being rescued he’d forgotten all his practiced lines, joking with her to mask the fear he’d felt up to that point and the sudden ease that had come over him at seeing her. He’d only remembered what he wanted to say as she got the call to leave. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t exactly ask her to delay her exit just to hear his awkward apology for trying to kiss her, but now he was left wondering when— _if_ —he’d see her in private again.

Surprisingly for Bellamy, he didn’t have to wait long. When Octavia’s taxi arrived to take her home, she still seemed uncertain about leaving him on his own, but he’d insisted once more that he was fine and going straight to bed, so she finally relented. That said, after brushing his teeth and flopping into bed, Bellamy found that despite his body’s exhaustion, he couldn’t get his mind to turn off. He was just trying another round of the breathing techniques Lincoln had taught him last week when he heard a noise from outside his room.

It had Bellamy on his feet quickly and out of his bedroom without stopping to grab a weapon. Foolish, perhaps, but he’d been sure he recognised that sound—and he was right.

“Hi,” he said, hoping he sounded casual as he leaned against the wall of the corridor.

She looked up from shutting the window, quick enough that her hood fell back down, and under the light from the corridor, her braid glistened, longer than he remembered. She adjusted the hood back up, tucking the braid inside, but didn’t reach for her device that could control the lights.

After a glance at the open bedroom door and his surely more rumpled than usual hair, she said, “I’m sorry if I woke you. When I saw the light on, I thought you would be up.”

“It’s okay, I couldn’t sleep,” Bellamy assured her. He hadn’t really thought about why he had left the light on, but he knew it wasn’t because he’d needed a night light. “I’m glad you came,” he added, tugging on his old t-shirt awkwardly when she still looked unsure. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“I, uh, dropped by earlier,” she admitted, “but you had company.”

Bellamy nodded, recalling the faint noise he’d heard earlier, but it had been hard to distinguish when he’d also been listening to the television and Octavia at the same time. Part of him had wondered if it could have been her, though he’d dismissed it at the time. Now, at her admission, a faint hope rose in him. It would have been one thing if she’d been in the neighbourhood and noticed his light on; it was another to come over twice in one night to make sure she spoke to him. “My sister was here. She was worried about what happened, but it’s fine,” he said, gesturing to his forehead, “I can’t even feel it anymore.”

“She cares about you.”

It was said with such authority that Bellamy thought she must have observed them for a little while before she left. “Yeah, well, it’s been just the two of us for a while. Although,” he added with a shrug, “she’s got Lincoln now. I think things are working out with them.”

“He seems like a good man.”

Bellamy looked up sharply at her, curious even though he now agreed with the sentence. “You’ve met him?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I just mean… from what I know about him. He seems like a good person, all the work he does for the community…”

“How do you know about that?” Bellamy asked. Despite his initial annoyance about Lincoln, particularly when he was uncooperative during his arrest, Bellamy had grown fond of the man, even if he’d held back on admitting that to his sister. Still, Bellamy couldn’t recall discussing Lincoln with the Princess after the charges were dropped. It had been early on in their partnership, so Bellamy knew he had only given her details about Lincoln as they pertained to the case. “Did you look into him?”

She seemed to wilt a little under his gaze before setting her shoulders straighter and responding, “I didn’t follow him or anything. Didn’t find anything a background check wouldn’t have revealed.” She looked at him directly, almost daring him to argue with her.

“Why? I told you all the information that could help.”

“I know, I just… You were worried about Octavia.”

Bellamy swallowed as that unwanted hope started to bloom in his chest once more, this time showing no signs of abating. Despite her immediate reply, he could tell she thought the better of it as she quickly looked away. Without thinking, Bellamy raised his right hand to rest on her shoulder, to stop her from moving further back. She inhaled sharply but didn’t retreat, tilting her face to look up at him, waiting to see what he would do next.

“Thank you,” he blurted out. It didn’t seem quite like the appropriate thing to say to a vigilante who’d most likely broken some laws investigating his sister’s boyfriend, but he did feel grateful. He hadn’t needed the outside confirmation of Lincoln’s goodness in the end, but the fact that she had cared enough about Bellamy’s point of view to do something like that meant something to him.

She softened a little. “Don’t mention it.”

“I…” Bellamy started, his mouth a little dry as he looked down at her. Words—normally his strong suit, he’d won over many a jury with his speeches—now seemed to fail him. Warring with himself, he finally decided he would always wonder if he didn’t try, so he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.

Part of him worried he’d completely misread her, but Bellamy relaxed when he felt her lips opening slightly under the gentle press of his mouth. Savouring the soft feel of her lips, Bellamy kept the kiss slow, not wanting to spook her. He’d just trailed his hand up her neck to cup her jaw, intending to tilt her head, when she suddenly backed away.

Bellamy inhaled deeply as he tried to gauge her reaction. Back flat against the far wall (not to mention her hood firmly down over the eye mask), she was now too far away for him to read her expressions with any clarity. It was impossible to miss, though, how she pressed her gloved fingers to her lips, almost as if he had burnt her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Wait,” she called out, stopping him as he turned away with every intention of hiding in his bedroom until she left.

Bellamy glanced back at her, now a few steps closer, her eyes considering him as her hands came to rest on his elbows where his arms hung by his sides.

“Can you… keep your arms here?” she asked quietly.

“What?” Bellamy wanted to shiver at the feel of her cool gloves against his skin, but was afraid to make any movements at all.

“Just, keep them here. Please?”

Bellamy nodded, keeping the rest of his body still as she lessened the distance between them, trailing her hands up his arms to rest squarely on his shoulders before she leaned up. He kept his eyes open until her nose brushed against his and then, suddenly, they were kissing and it was… strange.

Not that it was a bad kiss. Quite the opposite, Bellamy thought. Her mouth was insistent on his until he opened up for her, When her hands moved to cup his cheeks, she closed the gap between them so she was pressed against him down to her waist. If he was honest with himself, Bellamy could admit he’d spent a lot of time since the Princess’ last appearance on his fire escape thinking about her lips. Clearly, he hadn’t spent enough time thinking about everything else: how it would feel to have her hands running through his hair or her breasts pressed tightly to his chest, not to mention the plates of her actual fucking _armour_ against him, which was awesome. The problem was that the more he tried to lose himself in the kiss, the more he thought about what he couldn’t feel.

He’d always known that he was a tactile person, liked the comfort of feeling something solid under his palms, but not being able to touch something had never irked him quite as much as it did right now. Bellamy was desperate to bring his hands up to her face, her back, anywhere, just so he could hold onto her and make sure she didn’t stop what she was doing. Then, she made this breathy moan into his mouth and he had to clench his hands into fists to stop himself from moving. With a little growl, he licked further into her mouth, leaning forward, but unable to balance himself he ended up pushing too far into her and she tripped back, breaking the kiss.

Breathing harshly, they both stared at each other, Bellamy uncurling his hands as neither said anything for a few long moments.

Then, “I should go.”

Bellamy’s eyes widened. “That’s it?”

“I—” she paused as Bellamy heard a faint crackling sound. She quickly put her hand to her ear and turned away from him to listen to the words coming in, but Bellamy couldn’t make out what was being said. “I have to go,” she told him when she turned back. “It’s an emergency.”

Bellamy met her gaze evenly. It was one thing to be a jerk at her running out on him for no reason, but he’d be a real asshole if he pouted over her leaving to handle a real emergency. “Okay,” he said, noting he didn’t sound as fine as he intended. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he added, going for nonchalant once more, but feeling like he still missed the mark.

“Right,” she said, clearly going for a smirk, but seemingly a little off her game. Though not enough to forget to close the window behind her when she quickly slipped out.

After a few moments of staring at the space she’d just occupied, Bellamy turned out the lights and shuffled into his bedroom. He fell face first onto his bed and tried very hard not to think about the stupid thing he had just done.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left comments & kudos after the last chapter! I had a lot of fun with this update, hope you guys enjoy it - let me know what you think :)  
> And many thanks to [megaphonemonday](http://megaphonemonday.tumblr.com/) for betaing!

 

“Awesome hit,” Jasper said approvingly as he tied up the pair of would-be thieves.

“You got some good punches in too,” Clarke replied. It was true. In the last few weeks Jasper had greatly improved his control over his speed.

“Seriously? Are you two going to hug over how well you beat us up?” grumbled the bound man as he struggled against the rope. The woman next to him glared wordlessly at Clarke, who only rolled her eyes before moving to check on the bag of goods they had been trying to steal. She and Jasper had taken the pair out swiftly; she would hardly call it a beat down.

“We’re having a moment over here,” Jasper shot back. “Why don’t you save that attitude for the cops?”

“Speaking of which,” Clarke said, tapping Jasper on the elbow as she heard the sirens grow closer, “time for us to go, Bolt.”

Jasper spared a quick smile at the name. Now that he’d finally decided on his favourite, Clarke had started referring to him as such in public. “Good idea.” Taking her arm, he transported them to a nearby rooftop so they could see the officers arrive and watch what happened next.

It had been exactly a week since Jasper had discovered Shumway’s body miles away from the courthouse, in the lake that connected Mecha and Walden districts. Monty had retrieved the coroner’s report, which listed Shumway’s official cause of death as drowning. Although the report noted the presence of a minor head injury, the coroner surmised Shumway had slipped down the steep bank and injured himself before falling into the lake and succumbing to the water. Still, even if some people believed his death was an accident (and Clarke wasn’t one of them), no one seemed to have an answer as to how he’d gotten all the way from the courthouse to the lake in the first place. And that wasn’t the only troubling question left…

Once Monty had accessed the police files, it hadn’t taken long for Clarke to realise the arrest records were two people short. She may have slipped out of the courthouse in a hurry after Jasper’s call came in, but Clarke had made sure to check everyone was tied up where she had left them. As there had been nothing on the news to suggest anyone other than Shumway had escaped custody, the two missing thugs must have fled sometime between Clarke leaving and the police arriving on the scene. They had been deciding what to do with that knowledge when Wells beat them to the punch. The Deputy Police Commissioner, flanked by the Captains of the three precincts involved, had paused uncomfortably when Wells raised the question at the press conference. Any relief Clarke had felt had been short-lived, however, when Walden’s Police Captain chimed in, suggesting the discrepancy was down to the Avengers’ failings. His statement was followed up with murmurs of agreement from his colleagues and the Deputy Commissioner’s assertion that Ark PD would devote more man-hours to looking for the duo that may have helped Shumway escape.

Although the four of them had agreed Shumway’s escape was a carefully planned affair, one they couldn’t have affected, the Captain’s words—not to mention Wells’ suggestion at the courthouse that they could have made the situation worse—continued to niggle in the back of Clarke’s mind. Still, she was trying her best not to let those worries distract her when she was on patrol.

“Seems to be going smoothly,” Jasper remarked after a few minutes.

“All clear on the ground,” Raven chimed in on the comms from her spot over the road from the store, parked in the van they’d purchased a few days ago.

“Trail them to the station and head home?” Jasper suggested as the officers led the thieves into the police car. They’d been on the streets for a few hours now, but the easy jewellery store bust had been the most action they’d had all night.

Clarke thought about it for a moment. “You two do that. I want to patrol for a bit longer.”

“You sure?” Raven asked, even as they heard her start the ignition. “Seems to be another quiet night.”

Back at base, Monty let them know that he agreed with Raven’s assessment and wasn’t picking up any new disturbances. Despite the team’s stress in the week following Shumway’s death, it had been unusually quiet on the streets, something Clarke found disconcerting rather than relaxing.

“I just want to clear my head, won’t be out late,” Clarke said.  “I’ll let you know if I run into any trouble.”

Her team accepted Clarke’s statement without pressing. She felt a little guilty as Jasper dashed off with a parting smile and Raven wished her a good night, but not guilty enough to admit to her lie.

_Well, it wasn’t a complete lie_ , Clarke reasoned with herself. She didn’t plan on being out late, _but_ she wasn’t going patrolling. She had a much more specific destination in mind, carefully navigating the rooftops (with one eye on the street in case anything suspicious occurred, of course) until she reached Bellamy’s apartment building.

 

Perching on the fire escape, Clarke could hear the hum of his television but nothing else to suggest he had company. She reached out to push the window open further, but she stopped when the glow emanating from his corridor light highlighted the marks left on her costume after the evening’s activities. Brushing the grime off her arms, Clarke couldn’t help but consider the rest of her appearance.

Thanks to Raven’s most recent adjustments, the fabric was now more muck-resistant and the dirt fell away, though she couldn’t hide the dent in one of the bodice’s armoured panels. After wiping her hands on her hips, Clarke patted her hair down, making sure the wig was still secure. While standing in line at her favourite coffee shop a few months ago, a group of teenagers wearing handmade Avengers t-shirts had complimented Clarke on how well she had replicated the Princess’ style. Naturally, she had immediately stopped wearing her hair that way, but as people had already seen the Princess’ long, blonde hair there hadn’t seemed much point in changing hairstyles. So, she bought the wig. At least it saved on the time of hastily wrangling her own hair into a braid whenever there was an emergency.

In the midst of putting her hood back up, a sharp movement at the corner of her eye prompted Clarke to jerk her head to the left, concerned she’d been spotted. It transpired that she had been, though not by a person. Instead, Clarke was greeted by the sight of Natalie perched on the inside ledge of the next window along. She tensed, afraid the cat might make a noise and alert the Millers to her presence, but Natalie simply sat there, tail swishing in the air as she watched back carefully. Clarke knew she was probably projecting the questioning look in Natalie’s wide, unblinking eyes, but it felt like she was saying: What are you going to do?

_Good question._ Clarke sighed, pulled the hood firmly down on her head. The other night, she’d only wanted to check on Bellamy: see how he was faring after his ordeal, maybe discuss the particulars of what had happened to Shumway. She’d figured that due to his personal involvement in the case—it was the reason he’d agreed to work with them, after all—he’d want to know all the details, few as they were. Instead, she’d exchanged a few pleasantries with him before sticking her tongue down his throat and hightailing it out of there when Jasper called for backup. She’d returned twice since, both times with good intentions— _really_ —but somehow, instead of making conversation, she kept making out with his stupid, beautiful face.

Still, this night, her fourth visit in seven days, she could keep her mouth to herself. _Right_?

Pushing the window up and slipping inside Bellamy’s apartment, Clarke immediately triggered the switch on her cuff to dim, though not turn off, the lights. It was followed by the sound of a metal clang and a slight chuckle. Clarke’s flat boots slid down the corridor, bypassing the doors on either side of her until she entered the living room, the sole bright space lit up by the glow of the television. As it was empty, she pivoted to face the connecting kitchen and found Bellamy stood with his back against the far counter, facing the entrance, clearly expecting her. Clarke took in his crooked glasses, rumpled hair, sweatpants and threadbare short-sleeved tee, showing off his arms—dear God, his _arms_ —at their best.

_Nope,_ holding herself back was definitely not happening tonight.

“You sure know how to make an entrance, huh?” he smirked, hands resting on the counter behind him casually, but the moment Clarke started towards him, he used them to propel himself forward.

They met somewhere in the middle. Clarke hooked her arms around his neck and raised herself onto her tiptoes to kiss him before he could say anything else. Judging by his reaction, walking her backwards until her back was against the fridge without ever breaking the kiss, Clarke was certain Bellamy didn’t have a problem with it. However, the quick motion caused her hood to fall back, cracking through her haze, which was completely broken when his glasses dropped onto her nose.

She laughed against his mouth as he broke away from her just enough to push the frames back up.

“Sorry,” he said, a little sheepish, as he rolled his thumb and forefinger against the loose joint in the thick-rimmed frames. “I’ve been meaning to get a new pair.”

“I like them.” Clarke coloured a little when she realised what she’d said. “I mean, uh, they suit you— not that it matters,” she sputtered, flexing her fingers on his broad shoulders as she pressed her lips together into a flat line while Bellamy looked on expectantly, his face still only inches away from hers.

His lips quirked up in a smile that was unexpectedly gentle. “I don’t think you came over to talk about my glasses.”

And there it was, the perfect opportunity to actually talk business with him. Then again, as his eyes stayed fixed on hers and his hands braced against the fridge, keeping her locked in place, Clarke couldn’t help but feel Bellamy wasn’t in a rush to discuss business either. “No,” Clarke replied, but anything else she might have said faded from memory when his tongue darted out to lick his top lip.

Pushing common sense aside, she leaned up to capture his lips once more and Bellamy met her eagerly. She knew, logically, that she shouldn’t, couldn’t, keep doing this, but Clarke couldn’t quite bring herself to stop. How could she stop when it was so addictive, the heat of him pressed up against her as his tongue fought with hers for dominance? Especially on a night like tonight when she already had adrenaline coursing through her veins after a win.

She broke off for air, but Bellamy kissed his way down her throat undeterred. Nosing her hood open wider, he settled in to suck wet, biting kisses on the lowest part of her neck. It was the first time she’d felt his lips anywhere other than her mouth and Clarke sighed, the sensation even better than she’d imagined.

“Bellamy,” she said breathlessly, her hands curling tightly in his hair before Clarke frowned in annoyance. Her gloves were spoiling her enjoyment of the soft locks that were tickling the side of her jaw. Still, it was hard to stay annoyed about anything when he was doing _that_ with his tongue, so Clarke settled back to holding him in place, scratching his scalp gently and his hands squeezed her thighs in response.

When she’d returned to see Bellamy the night after they’d first kissed, Clarke had sensibly intended to explain away the moment and revert back to their previous status quo, but instead found herself pushing him up against the wall in his corridor to kiss him. Just when she’d started to worry about his lack of his response, Bellamy had somehow unfrozen himself and returned the kiss fervently, even reversing their positions a few moments later. The action had initially given Clarke pause until she noticed how carefully he held his hands away from her, arms loose but not quite relaxed, trying to follow her original instructions despite clearly finding it difficult. She couldn’t help but find the action oddly endearing. Plus, the way the muscles in his arms had tensed, hands clenching in restraint, had been ridiculously hot.

If he was already getting up close and personal with her face, there was no reason he couldn’t put his hands on her a little, Clarke had reasoned with herself that night as she’d placed his hands on her hips. She’d even reminded him not to put his hands near her face, but that restriction was far from a hardship when she got to enjoy the heat of his hands elsewhere.

They were currently kneading the flesh just underneath her ass, almost as if he was moments away from lifting her up by her thighs and locking her legs around his waist. The thought shouldn’t have made Clarke hotter—after all, she did have enough super strength to get herself in the same position without help, but that felt less exciting than letting Bellamy do it for her. As Bellamy’s head nestled a little closer, she was tempted to just remove her gloves and finally run her fingers through his curls properly. However, before she could complete the action, Bellamy pulled his head back a little and made a quiet clucking noise, as if confused.

It was only a moment until he resumed kissing the same spot, this time more insistently, but soon he broke off once more and hummed in thought before returning to his task. Clarke laughed suddenly as realisation struck. “Are—are you trying to give me a hickey?”

He growled in response, sucking harder.

“I don’t think it’s, _oh,_ going to st-stick,” Clarke responded brokenly, torn between laughter and pleasure at Bellamy’s ministrations.

He pulled back further this time to check again and frowned so deeply that Clarke found herself reaching out to smooth the frown lines that peeked out between the curls matted to his forehead. When he glanced up at her questioningly, she froze a little at her own tender gesture and said quickly, “You, uh, had some fluff.” She rubbed her fingers against each other in the air and brought her hand back down.

Bellamy looked amused, but not suspicious, as he stood to his full height. “So, your magic powers heal hickeys too, huh?” he said wryly, a teasing glint in his eyes, which Clarke found comforting. Teasing she could do.

Clarke grinned up at him. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully, not having had anyone to test that with since she got her powers. She suspected it was true, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to joke, “Maybe it’s your technique that’s lacking.”

“Oh, really?” he smirked down at her. “I’ll have you know my technique is amazing.”

“Amazing?” Clarke repeated, raising an eyebrow in amusement.

“Mind-blowing, even,” he said, tilting her chin up with his finger as he leaned down, seemingly for another kiss when he suddenly stopped mid-movement. His cheeks coloured with a noticeable flush despite the dim lighting.

Lips pouted and waiting for his, Clarke was unsure as to why Bellamy had frozen until she realised he was staring at his own hand on her face before he pulled himself fully back from her.

Clarke felt herself flushing too. She should have been the one to notice he’d broken her rule.

“I’m sorr—“ he began at the same time she started saying his name, so they both abruptly went silent.

She touched a hand to her face awkwardly and felt some hair stuck to the side of her cheek. The texture felt odd, even through her gloves, the wig another reminder of the falseness of her appearance. Dropping her head, she brushed the wisps of hair away from her face. The gesture was self-conscious, something to do while she wondered how to fill the silence, but Clarke could see how the instant Bellamy’s eyes caught on where her fingers traced the edge of her mask, he pulled further away from her, his face shuttering.

He walked, somewhat woodenly, over to his previous position by the far counter and turned the kettle on to boil. Clarke faintly remembered hearing the sound of it boiling shortly after she had arrived, but she had been a little too preoccupied to give it much attention at the time. Now, she noticed the mug that was already set out next to the kettle as Bellamy opened a drawer and pulled out a teaspoon.

“Uh, would you like something to drink?” Bellamy offered, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

Certain he’d been about to ask her to leave, Clarke could only blink at him.

“I was making tea, but there’s coffee or –“

“No, thank you,” Clarke said, but the response was automatic rather than genuine. As soon as she spoke, it occurred to her that she was actually a little thirsty. “Could I have some water please?”

Any worries that Bellamy was simply trying to be polite were eased when he gave a small smile at her request and a gentle nod of the head. “Sure.”

In no time, the kettle whistled since, like Clarke, it hadn’t completely cooled down yet. Bellamy, however, ignored it in favour of getting a glass out of the cupboard and pouring cold water into it.

“I don’t have any ice.”

“That’s fine,” Clarke assured him. “Thank you,” she added when Bellamy held the drink out to her. He held himself a little farther back than felt totally natural, but he didn’t seem upset.

As she gulped half the water down, making a mental note to stay better hydrated during patrol, Clarke watched Bellamy make his own drink. The only other sound was the continuing murmur of the television. She hadn’t registered it fully before, but now what sounded suspiciously like Amy Poehler’s voice rang out in the silence. Still, Clarke felt surprisingly at ease sipping the rest of her drink without making conversation. Or, she did until she realised Bellamy had moved so he was right in front of her and was looking at her expectantly.

Clarke clutched the glass a little closer to her chest as she wondered if he was going to kiss her again. Instead, Bellamy simply gave her a lopsided smile.

“I need to get the milk,” he said, gesturing to the refrigerator that she was still blocking.

Clarke hoped it was dark enough that he didn’t notice her blush as she murmured, “Of course,” and stepped out of his way. However, once he opened the door, Clarke realised she had unwittingly moved into the corner of the room, inserting herself even further into his space.

“So, are you hungry?”

Clarke blinked at the open refrigerator door before repeating, “Hungry?” Bellamy emerged from behind the door but didn’t seem to notice her mounting confusion.

“You must use up a lot of energy out there,” Bellamy mused, now pouring milk into his mug. “Do you even have time to eat? I’ve got leftovers from my dinner that I could heat up for you, if you want? It’s, uh, this Filipino dish,” he continued, “it’s a little spicy but it’s not that hot if you don’t like—“

“I’m fine,” she said, biting back a smile. Clarke remembered how Octavia used to complain after Bellamy visited her at college, saying he constantly grumbled that she wasn’t eating right and spent most of his visit cooking bulk meals to keep her fed when he was gone. Of course, Octavia was quite lazy about cooking her own food, so she’d never shared these complaints with Bellamy himself. Clarke, who had been lucky enough to try some of those meals, knew Bellamy was a good cook. Warmth filled her at the idea of him suddenly heating up his leftovers for her at this hour. But the more she thought about it, the more Clarke realised that he really would do it, if she asked, and it made her feel suddenly melancholy. “I did eat earlier, but thank you,” she added, hoping the voice modulator didn’t disguise her genuine gratitude. “But I’d better go. And I-I shouldn’t have come here, like this. Bothering you—“

“You’re not bothering me. I like seeing you, I,” he paused, turning to look at her head on before finishing, “I’d like to see more of you.” She could see that it took a lot for him to admit it, but Clarke’s defences immediately went up.

“I don’t want to talk about my disguise. I have to go, I—“

“You don’t want to talk about anything,” he interrupted, then shook his head when she looked away. “And that’s not even what I meant. Not that I’m wild about the whole disguise thing either, but I-I meant I want to see you more often. Which is crazy, I know,” he seemed to add more to himself. “I barely know anything about you.”

“Yes, you do,” Clarke said quickly, and his eyes met hers again. They looked pure black in the far corner of the room, but she could still see the spark in them.

Suddenly, she had a different fantasy of what might happen when she slipped into Bellamy’s apartment after a long night of crime fighting. She’d had more than her fair share of daydreams about their make out sessions in the last week, but now she could picture them eating together and watching _Parks and Rec_ on his couch and maybe it was the stress or lack of sleep talking, but it felt ridiculously _nice_. But in that fantasy, she changed out of her costume and was just Clarke. And just Clarke was someone Bellamy would slam the door shut on.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Clarke continued, “I-I wasn’t expecting to… _like_ seeing you either, Bellamy, but I do. Things are just complicated right now.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“I really do have to go,” Clarke said. It didn’t feel like a lie when she had no idea what she would do if she stayed any longer. “But I’m hoping to get a few more leads on what happened to Shumway soon,” she added, clearing her throat. “And then maybe we could discuss them?”

“Right,” Bellamy said slowly, his face pinching as if the word tasted funny on his tongue. “Discuss the case.”

“If you’d rather not be involved—“

“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “If you find anything, I want to know about it.”

“Okay. So, I’ll stop by in a couple of days.”

“A couple of days,” he repeated, face expressionless now.

Clarke knew his stilted demeanour was partly her fault, but she couldn’t change that so she tried not to add it to her list of things to feel guilty about. And if her feet dragged a little on the way out, no one had to know.


End file.
